


One Week at Quantico

by CrossedBeams



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, F/M, MSR, Pre-Series, Quantico AU, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-08-24 11:20:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8370259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrossedBeams/pseuds/CrossedBeams
Summary: What if Mulder had been teaching at the Academy when Scully was training…





	1. Monday Night is Laundry Night

**_Quantico - 1992_ **

Mulder first sees her in the corridor, walking slowly with her nose buried in a thick textbook. He’s going too fast  to see what she’s reading, but he remembers the top of her head, red and studious, trailing half a corridor behind a group of taller, glossier trainees. That group had noticed him, a couple of the women had smiled that promising kind of smile that he’d grown so used to in the VCU, and then forgotten again after transferring to the basement.

Mostly he doesn’t care what his fellow agents think of him. Mostly he doesn’t hear it. A major perk of spending your life buried under fusty stacks of ageing paper or interviewing small town characters in two room police stations, is the distance it puts between you and office gossip.There are still echoes, but not like this. Of all places, Quantico is the hotbed of Bureau gossip, nicknames and urban legends handed down to the next generation along with combat skills and interrogation techniques. Mulder has no doubt that by the end of his first day’s teaching, news of his “spookiness” will turn the tide of interest in the hallways from vague flirtation to unsubtle ridicule. 

Blevins had made it incredibly clear that this assignment was not optional. That the lecturer they’d had planned to ground the latest batch of Academy trainees in the basics of profiling was unavailable, and that he was their next best option. There was no room for debate, a plane ticket waiting to ferry Mulder back from Salem, MA and a taxi from there to the room at the Academy that would be his home for the next week. Not for the first time, Mulder regrets subletting his apartment. In theory it was much more convenient to crash in the office, in the car or at a motel, and he hadn’t been spending any time there, but at times like these he really misses the freedom to shut the world out and stare at his fish tank. Or his pay per view…

As a gale of laughter and male bravado washes through the thin walls from the outside corridor Mulder sighs and closes the X-File he’d been reading. Rock-Man sightings would have to wait - he has a lecture to plan.

* * *

Scully hadn’t thought twice before thrusting her hand into the air. The visiting lecturer had concluded his analysis of a recent killer’s profile, one whose anonymous notes to the police claim that a visitor from the future told him to kill his victims, by asking if anyone would disagree with the assessment that the man was delusional. The second her hand found clear air and Agent Mulder’s eyes met hers she realised the question had been both rhetorical and a joke. Damn it Dana! But even as a flush rose up her neck to the tips of her still outstretched fingers she found herself unable to back down in the face of the challenge in his eyes.

‘You have an alternate theory?’ His voice barely shifts from its easy monotone.

‘Yes sir.’ She says firmly. ‘For the purposes of academics anyway. The man _is_ almost certainly delusional. But for the sake of argument, quantum physics doesn’t _actually_ rule out time travel. Given the profile posits the suspect to be a man of exceptional intelligence, it’s not outside the realms of extreme possibility that he has either experimented with the theory surrounding time travel and achieved some sort of breakthrough… or that he at least believes he has…’ she trails off. Sniggers have broken out at the back of the room among the muscle club of the cohort and are spreading through the lecture hall.

‘Interesting.’ is Agent Mulder’s  only assessment before he holds up his hand for silence. ‘While your classmate’s theory still points to a man suffering from a delusion, she raises an important point. That of nuance. A good profile deals in specificity, in finding those points of individuality that point at a single person rather than an entire demographic. Insight like the time travel factoid may seem ridiculous, but the fact that we may be looking for a physicist, or someone with an interest in the field of quantum physics is certainly worth considering.’

This time when he meets her eyes there is something different in them. 

Curiosity. Or maybe even respect.

* * *

She’d spent the rest of his lecture huddled over her notes and writing furiously, as if with enough diligence she could somehow rewrite her fascinating interruption into non-existence. Mulder had hoped she might come and speak to him after the lecture, acknowledge their moment of intellectual connection, but when the bell goes she’s gone in a flash of red before he’s even powered down the projector. By the time he’s packed up, exchanged politeness with the candidates for lecturers pet and and gently refused an invitation to post-training drinks from two lash-fluttering brunettes, she is long gone.

Mulder had planned to spend his free afternoon trawling the archives for newspaper reports that might shed some light on his rock-man but when he’s settled in the computer suite he instead finds himself scrolling through the candidate files on the current batch of trainees. A sea of faces; future paper pushers and profilers and preservers of the peace. But just one Dana Katherine Scully, her list of academic achievements far outstripping the 5'2 height measured in last week’s physical. 

There’s something about her expression in the ID photo that transfixes Mulder, some solemnity, a sense of purpose that stands out from all the others. Usually these photographs are little better than mugshots, candidates aiming either to intimidate the camera or make the stiff portrait friendlier. Both inevitably fail. But not hers.

The sound of the door opening jolts Mulder out of his trance and he shuts down the window, shaking off Dana Scully’s gaze and tries to focus on his case.

* * *

Scully doesn’t look up when the door to the laundry room opens, she barely even acknowledges the sound. She’s been staring at the same page of her pathology text ever since the dryer cycle started and trying not to dwell on this morning’s humiliation. Her analytical mind has already stripped any idea of respect from Agent Mulder’s assessing gaze and has replaced it with disbelief at her audacity, or maybe it was amusement at her ridiculous, childish interruption. Melissa always tells her that one of these days her know-it-all ways will get her into trouble. Maybe today is that day. Scully had wanted to distinguish herself within the cohort but not by being the one to throw a bizarre, rambling theory at a handsome lecturer. She sighs and turns the page, letting the medical jargon lull her into a numb sort of calm where Agent Mulder’s hazel gaze can’t invade her every thought.

Just every third thought or so.

* * *

Mulder has been trying not to stare and failing ever since he unbent from stuffing two weeks worth of laundry into the washer and saw her. If he’d seen her when he first came in he might have just run away. But pulling all his clothes back out just to avoid having to behave like a normal human around the trainee who has occupied more of his thoughts this evening than he cares to admit, seems preposterous even for him. Instead he blindly scoops detergent on top of his clothes and watches her out of the corner of his eye, red head bent over another weighty tome, legs crossed up on one of the high counters with just a flash of creamy skin peeking out between her Acadamy sweatshirt and the waistband of her jeans. He has never seen anyone read so intently. Shutting the washer he feeds in his quarters, debating whether to scurry back to his room or stay and go over his case-file as he had intended. 

A low sound from across the room makes up his mind. She is humming, flat and quiet but it’s unmistakably Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, though he can’t remember if it’s the beginning of spring or autumn. He’d put her down for autumn, for the russet bounty of her hair and he laughs softly at the cheesily poetic train of his thoughts. She stirs at the noise and catches him staring.

‘Oh.’ Is her only response and Mulder thinks it’s the best monosyllable he’s ever heard. Not so much for the genius of the word but for the tone and expression with which she delivers it. There’s a quirk to her eyebrow that’s a question and a challenge, a pinch to her lips that’s not quite a smile but a suggestion that it could develop into one. Her voice is low, soft and laden with the potential for evenings spent debating Einstein and philosophy that spiral into nights tangled together, disagreeing even until that final ‘Oh!’ brings them together. Mulder feels his breath shorten and fights for something, anything, to say that will give her half as much back as she just gave him.

'I’m Fox Mulder.’ Is all he manages and now she does smile, teeth flashing as she rolls her first name about her mouth and then returns it to him on a giggle.

'Fox? Like the woodland creature?’ He usually hates people laughing at his name but he can’t be mad at her pronouncement, the “O” as plump and perfect as her lips and her tone one of genuine delight.

'I always prefer of “Fantastic Mr Fox” fame… but the result is basically the same. Clearly I disappointed my mother even before I was born… so I go by Mulder.’ He doesn’t know why he’s sharing his twisted relationship with his mother with her already but when he sees understanding replace humour in the ever-changing blue of her eyes he’s glad he did.

'At least you were a consistent disappointment. I think they take it harder when you’re a late bloomer in the “throwing your life away” department!“ Scully tries to keep the hurt out of her voice but there’s something in the air that’s stripping away their defences and making her feel like somehow she can trust this almost stranger with her secrets. He’s closer now, eyes darker this evening than they looked across the lecture hall.

'Your parents disapprove of your joining the Bureau? Leaving medicine?’ And Mulder knows from the slump of her shoulders, the bowing of her head that he’s right on target. But then her eyes snap back up to meet his with an accusation,

'You read my file!’ And he’s discovered. Mulder is ready to lie, to say he read all of the trainee’s files when he realises that somehow she will know he is lying, that a lie will ruin this twilight zone moment of unguardedness they are sharing. He also realises that he doesn’t want to lie to her, that he’d rather be rejected and ridiculed than minimise the impact she’s had on him. And so he tells her.

'Dana Katherine Scully. 26. Medical doctor. Below average height. Above average intelligence. Likes to heckle in lectures… I was curious about you.’

Scully is blushing again but this time there's not fifty feet and as many trainees between them and Mulder watches entranced as the flush spreads from her cheeks right up to the roots of her hair, engulfing her freckles as it goes. He can’t remember the last time he saw a woman blush like that. He wants to trace the same path as her blood did with his lips, starting high on her cheekbone and covering her whole, questioning face with the certainty of his interest, but she’s talking so he makes himself listen.

'That seems unfair, Trainees don’t have access to that sort of information,’ and though Scully’s arms fold defensively he can hear genuine interest quavering on the edges of her rebuke. 

Stepping in front of her Mulder holds out his right hand in greeting, swallowing the thrill of the idea that she is about to touch him for the very first time.

'Fox William Mulder. Often referred to as “Spooky” Mulder by my less generous colleagues. Psych major, former profiler and currently disappointing both my parents and the FBI by chasing ghosts, monsters and extraterrestrials on the so-called “X-Files”. Slightly above average height. Academic intelligence fars outweighs social intelligence. Very much enjoys being heckled in lectures by interesting redheads.’

And her hand in his is everything and nothing. A simple touch, gentle pressure, but he catches his breath because between the firm grip of her small fingers and the sparking blue of her eyes something inside him shifts to a new position. After months of caring only about his work, about the minutiae of his files, Mulder is suddenly, overwhelmingly interested in Dana Scully and finding out how far off the beaten path of accepted knowledge her curiosity strays. He thinks she feels it to, especially when she catches her breath and leans in but as his eyes flutter closed he realises she has bypassed his waiting lips and is looking behind him, her hand squeezing his shoulder to make him turn.

The washer containing his clothes is gurgling as bubbles rise past the lid and begin to cascade to the floor.

'Shit!’ he rushes over to try and find the power but it’s ducted to the wall and as he begins to prise the casing open to access the cable he feels Scully again at his shoulder.

'Mulder stop! There’s an override switch on the other side!’ He locates it and after a second the gurgling stops even if the bubbles don’t, pouring down on to the already sopping tile floor. So far Mulder’s sneakers have stopped his feet from getting wet but as he surveys the damage he notices Scully staring glumly at her soaking, sock-clad feet and the wave of bubbles inching inexorably towards the hem of her jeans.

Without thinking he’s swept her up and sat her neatly atop the closest dryer. Her eyes are wide with surprise, her body too close to his as he tries to force himself to let go of her waist, to step back from between her legs. But then she’s pulling him in and there are too many sensations to think of anything else. Her lips whisper across his as her fingers dance a giddy waltz up into his hair. His hands clench at her sides, bundling the soft grey marl of her sweater until his knuckles graze skin, softer still and she gasps with her whole body. Scully stops, shocked at her boldness and the air between them is thin and soap scented.

Mulder is sure there is some very good reason why he should answer the question in her eyes with a ‘no.’ but he can’t remember it. Instead pulls her closer, shivering as the inside seam of her jeans runs scrapes his thighs through his slacks and he stutters her name.

‘Scully - I -’

This time he can’t stop at her lips and moans when they open, her mouth coffee sharp and her tongue as bold against his as it was in his lecture this morning. She makes a tiny sound in the back of her throat and he swallows it greedily, hands roaming up to lose themselves in her hair and then down to drag her closer still to him. She is an unknown, an enigma and she is intoxicating. 

Scully’s not sure exactly of the FBI’s protocol on student/teacher interactions but she’s pretty sure that Agent Mulder’s hands on her ass, pressing her ever more firmly to his hardness is not on the list of approved activities. She’s equally sure that she doesn’t care. She had seriously considered her roommate’s invitation to go for drinks, tempted by the idea of abandoning her studious reputation and drowning this morning’s embarrassment at the bottom of a glass of wine. But as reckless as she’d felt, some stubborn part of her still needed to be the best, to prove her parents wrong. Instead of cutting loose she'd buckled down on her resolve, loaded her laundry and the advanced pathology reading into her hamper and prepared for an evening of study.

It seems though that today she was destined for a rebellion and this one far is superior to a few weeknight drinks. This one is heady and human and making her forget all her promises to focus on her career, to avoid tortured intellectuals and authority figures. This temptation tastes of desire and, forgetting her reservations, forgetting that there is no lock on the laundry room door Scully finds her hands making quick work of her instructor's belt buckle.

Mulder groans into her neck, teeth scraping across the swoop of her tendon and sending a wash of heat through her belly. His hands are inside her sweater fumbling the clasp of her bra and hers are worrying his fly past his erection when the dryer beneath them gives an almighty clunk and starts smoking.

Scully jumps down, splashing in the gathering puddle and starts to laugh.

'First the washer, then the dryer Mulder?! You know maybe you are a little spooky!’ He just shakes his head at his terrible luck and is about to reach for her, fire hazard be damned when the door opens and two other trainees walk in only to stop short at the mess.

‘What the hell happened in here?’ one of them asks the back of Mulder’s head as he tries to subtly refasten his pants and belt. He looks to Scully for help but she’s still chuckling and pulling her dry laundry into a basket. 

‘I - I think I might need to call maintenance,’ is all he can manage and as the trainees agree with him Scully is finished packing and rushes out, a tiny quirk of her kiss swollen lips the only goodnight she offers.

The other trainees follow her out, not even waiting for the door to shut before they start discussing what "that psychology guy's" problem was. Mulder wonders as he looks around for a number for maintenance what conclusion they’ll arrive at. Because as he sees it, he has three problems of varying severity. Firstly he has no clean clothes and secondly he’s about to get laid into by the maintenance guy. But by far his biggest problem, and one he couldn’t even have imagined at the start of the day, is that somewhere in this building, Dana Scully is roaming the corridors with her bra undone under her sweater. And if his inability to stop thinking of that in this moment is any indicator, this week is going to be a lot more interesting than he expected.


	2. Tuesday Night is Taco Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the wonderful response to my Quantico AU... it was meant to be a one shot but... This chapter covers the prompt received by @so-how-do-i-die---you-dont. Thank you to @carrie11 for a speedy beta :)

 Mulder wakes before his alarm on Tuesday morning with a raging hard on, and presses his nails into his palms until it subsides. Somehow he knows that if he finishes what the laundry room started and his fevered dreams continued, that he won’t be able to stand up in front of a roomful of trainees and speak coherently. Though if he’s completely honest, it’s not the whole room he’s worried about. Just her. Mulder knows that if he lets his mind wander back to the dreamy image of Dana Scully biting her lip as she slides down his body, there is no way in hell he’ll be able to face her.

He takes his shower cold and skips breakfast, preparing more rigorously for today’s lecture than he’s prepared for anything in recent years. Possibly ever. This is ridiculous. Two kisses and a fully grown man is worried about forming sentences in a work environment. Mulder had thought hormone surges this debilitating had gone out with puberty.

He tries not to think of her, of how she might look at him today, of questions he could ask the room that she might answer, whip smart and unexpected. Mulder tries not to imagine scenarios where the lecture theatre is magically empty and the two of them are locked in a heated debate about the details of one of his case studies. He tries not to imagine the two of them circling closer, eyes bright with conviction until inevitably they crash together and burn all the disagreements to nothing. He fails endlessly; tries to study the Rock-Man files, tries to go back to sleep, considers running back to that creepy museum in Salem or maybe even all the way to England.

In this strange place between indifference and obsession the minutes stretch out interminably and yet, somehow, 11am still arrives before Mulder is ready.

* * *

 Agent Mulder looks at her exactly once and only for slightly too long. Just long enough for heat to gather in her cheeks and make her drop her face to her lap, where a similar warmth is stirring. And that is it the end of it. One look is all she gets for two kisses and the promise of more. It happens right after he introduces the day’s focus, ‘Eliminating Prejudice to Spot Patterns,’ right before he starts to speak, and the brevity of it, the shock of it, is enough to ensure that his words wash meaningless across Scully's burning ears.

She squirms awkwardly and tries to look at her lecturer without staring at the man. Is that even possible? She’s never had to consider it before. How has she ended up back here, in the exact same seat and battling the same crippling discomfort as she was yesterday, albeit for very different reasons. Scully curses her organised mind for recognising the pattern; she forms habits quickly and apparently so does Agent Mulder. His current habit is to pace, sweeping the room evenly as he speaks, making eye contact with random trainees and drawing them in with his quiet intensity. It’s soothing, methodical and completely regular until the point at which his gaze reaches the guy two seats down from her. Then, suddenly, he becomes unduly concerned with his notes or his cuff or the ceiling, focusing intently on a distracting detail before picking up his surveillance a second or two later two people on the other side of her.

Earlier, Scully had refused to acknowledge the giddy flip of her stomach as she sat through her 9am pathology seminar as anticipation. Now she wishes she were as good at writing off the disappointing hollowness of his apparent indifference. Logically she knows that a crowded lecture theatre is a very different scenario to an abandoned laundry room and that their reckless liaison was a terrible idea for both of them. But still, every time his eyes dip to avoid hers, Scully feels her heart sink a little lower.

* * *

He makes it to the video portion of his lecture without incident, dimming the lights and letting out a huge sigh of relief. Mulder hadn’t expected to find her sitting exactly where he looked for her (of course she would arrive early and choose the same seat) and the bolt of electricity that shot from her eyes and straight through him had knocked all of his prepared thoughts from their carefully corralled places. Mulder thinks he recovered okay, thinks he did a passable impression of paying all parts of the room his attention, even as every fibre of him reached for the one place he wouldn’t… no… couldn’t look. Now though, the lights are low and he’s out of the spotlight. His resolve weakens.

He skims the crowd in the half-light and finds a roomful of eyes focussed raptly on the staged interrogation onscreen. All except for hers.    

* * *

Somehow Scully manages to rein herself in and, scribbling furiously, begins catching up from the notes of the girl next to her. Post “the look,” trying to listen to Agent Mulder’s voice had only confused her scrambled senses, so instead she shuts out the sound, a technique perfected as the quietest of four children, and blindly copies the information across. If she can just make it out of this room with mostly intact notes she can worry about understanding them later when she is less distracted. The sudden dimming of the lights jolts her out of her trance and when she looks up, blinking confusedly, he is watching her.

No. Not watching. Studying.

In the murky grey of the projector light Mulder’s eyes are starry, liquid black and fixed firmly on her. Scully blinks, but this time there is no reprieve, no polite professional avoidance, This time he is looking at her the way he did in the laundry room, between the time she kissed him and the time he kissed her back.

It is a dangerous look and still neither of them looks away, the rest of the room fading to a meaningless haze around the intensity of their focus. Scully bites her lip in a vain attempt to break the spell, to prevent the steady flush of heat spreading across her body but that just makes him inhale sharply. Mulder’s lips part, the light catching for a moment on the full crescent of his bottom lip, and it’s all Scully can do to stay in her seat. How can a single look be so intoxicating?

* * *

The end of the tape plunges the room into darkness as Mulder’s distraction prevents a smooth transition into his closing statements. By the time he finds the light switch, the pitch black interlude has enabled them to collect themselves. Scully has turned away from him, stuffing her overwrought emotion behind a professional exterior with the same force as she stuffs her notes back in her bag. Mulder fusses with papers, just to give him something to do with his hands as he rambles to a close before instructing the trainees to come and collect a copy of tomorrow’s reading as they leave.

The line straggles past at a good-natured crawl, photocopied sheets handed out with a half breath and a sigh of relief for every person that is not her. He hopes she will linger at the end of the line but two thirds through he spots that unmissable red flag of her hair approaching. Another missed opportunity… unless… Mulder holds up his finger to the outstretched hand of the guy in front of her and bends to scribble something in the shelter of his lectern. The trainee in question looks confusedly at him when presented, a few moments later, with a sheet identical to the last 40 or so, but shrugs and moves on. Let him wonder, Mulder thinks, as a small, freckled hand reaches across and he passes the copy he’d slid carefully to the bottom of the pile to Scully. He doesn’t let his hand brush hers, though he wants to and Scully doesn’t make eye contact though he thinks he can sense her fighting for the appearance of nonchalance. There is no excuse to linger and the line wears on without her.

When it finally runs out, Mulder doesn’t hang around to dissect his lecture with the would-be profilers of tomorrow. He gathers his things and hurries out, hoping against hope that he will catch her vanishing round a corner or leaning against the wall waiting like some high-school movie heroine. But once again she is gone. Mulder sighs, he doesn’t suppose she does laundry two nights in a row and he’s not sure he can survive a repeat of this morning in tomorrow’s lecture. They need to talk at the very least, though if he’s honest, he is hoping for so much more,.

He’s about to start concocting some plan to force himself into Scully’s path and is seriously considering violating every code of conduct to storm the women’s dormitories until he finds her, when a voice distracts him.

This distraction turns out to be a summons to the phone, where a disgruntled Blevins informs him that he’s four days overdue for his firearms re-certification and instructs him to get himself to the range pronto. Mulder groans inwardly, he’s out of practice, out of sorts and this day just keeps on getting worse.

* * *

“Tuesday Night Is Taco Night!”

Or so the posters outside the cafeteria proclaim when Scully drags her weary bones towards dinner at the end of a mind-numbing three hour seminar on due process and arrest protocol. Her first two weeks at the academy had been hard work but today is the first time she’s felt overwhelmed. The swing doors to the canteen open with a roar of dinner time noise, all muddled with the smell of spice and fried meat and in an instant it is too much. Muttering her excuses she spins and rushes to her room, thumping a day's worth of books onto the desk and collapsing on the bed. It is only 6pm and she is exhausted.

Drained, Scully thinks about calling her mother but that seems like an admission of failure. She considers crawling under the covers and sleeping, but there is too much to be done. Instead she wraps herself up in the duvet, curling as small as possible for comfort and drags her work across to her. Even for someone who thrives on knowledge there is too much reading and too little time.

She flicks through the day's notes, tomorrow's preparation and comes across the case study for tomorrow’s profiling session. The only positive aspect of her numbing exhaustion is that it has dulled the activity of her mind, dimmed the spark that all things related to Agent Mulder had ignited in her that morning. In this moment, Scully’s relief that the reading is relatively short far outweighs the anticipation of seeing her instructor again.

Until she finds the note.

Scrawled in hasty letters under the final paragraph

‘It was pitch black in here and I could see you blushing. You’re luminous Scully, how is that possible? I was going to make some comparison to the relative brightness of different stars but your classmate is giving me funny looks and I don’t want to rush things and have you take being compared to a red dwarf the wrong way... -M’

She reads it twice, wide-eyed and half smiling. Three times. And suddenly Scully is not tired at all. She’s amused by his gesture, exasperated at the risk, and frustrated that somehow Agent Mulder has managed to invade her evening, to speak while she has been forced to be silent. She’s still reading it, thrilling at her name in his prickling cursive, analysing his words, when her roommate and a couple of girls from their corridor breeze in on a gale of laughter. Burying the note in her study materials Scully tries to make nice, but soon their easy chatter grates on her and after ten minutes she once again seeks solitude. This time though, she is not thinking of sleep but rather the kind of stress relief that only the FBI firing range can provide. 

* * *

Adjusting his stance and lining up his shoulders, Mulder projects the face of the training instructor onto the target. On arrival he’s been told that he’d have to wait til 5:30 for anyone to be available to oversee his requalification. He’d killed the afternoon with some paperwork and daydreaming and, at 5:25, after several practice rounds, he was locked, loaded and ready to go. It’s now 6:20 and the instructor has just arrived back, strolling into the stifling hot room with what smells like Mexican food in a polystyrene box. Mulder is fuming and sweating, jacket already discarded and shirt sticking to him as the heavyset man drawls his way through the standard set-up speech and retires to the observation room with his dinner.

The timer starts ticking down and Mulder draws deep breaths through his nose and tries to calm his breathing as he waits for the buzzer. 85% and he’s out of here.

* * *

According to to the clock over the weapons sign-out, it has taken Scully well over three minutes to sign her name, ID number and arrival time in the log. This time corresponds almost exactly to the time it has taken Agent Mulder to complete the shooting qualification course. Scully flushes when the woman behind the desk hands her a Sig with a knowing look and hopes that her staring can be dismissed as the fascination of a new recruit watching a seasoned agent in action, rather than the appraising stare of a woman watching a man in a well fitted white shirt run around with a gun.

At first she hadn’t recognised Agent Mulder. Outside of the lecture hall with his shirt sleeves rolled high and sweat sticking his hair closer to his face he looks different. Younger and somehow raw; there’s a tense set to his jaw as he lines up his shots, a bunching of muscle under the clinging fabric and a lean energy to his movements, dropping to the floor and snapping up again with a spare sort of grace. His display is artless, a mesmerising masculinity that is all the more attractive for not being deliberate, and as she is buzzed into the range, Scully swallows hard, desperate to regain some sort of composure. Before, the attraction had been intellectual and chemical, the result of curiosity and proximity but seeing him like this has turned it into something primal.

* * *

Mulder ejects the used clip from his Sig as the instructor takes his time retrieving the target. He’s confident he’s made 85%, maybe even 90 and now he just wants to go back to his room, get out of his clothes and back to finding a way to make Dana Scully talk to him again before the end of the week. He looks up instinctively as the beep of the door announces a new arrival to the range, lights flickering on in the bay next to his and stops breathing.

Against the black walls of the range she is tiny, torn jeans and that same grey sweater implying a softness that doesn’t extend the the pistol at her side, the spark in her eyes or the purpose of her walk. His mouth dries as she walks past him with a nod.

‘Agent Mulder?’ Her voice sounds wrong and her lips don’t move. Weird. ‘Agent Mulder?’ And it’s not her but the instructor, salsa stain on his collar and cardboard target in hand. ‘You passed. 86%. I’ll get the paperwork to the Bureau in the morning so if there’s nothing else, I’ll be heading off.’

He’s as good as his word and in less than a minute Mulder finds himself stood alone in the firing range, considering his next move. A low, sweet voice echoes across from the next bay.

‘Only 86% Mulder? I’d have expected at least a 90!’ In the face of Scully’s teasing it occurs to Mulder that 86% is lower than he’d expect but his personal failure gives him an opportunity. He meets her eyes and finds a teasing challenge that he can’t resist,

‘Are you questioning my capabilities Miss Scully? Accusing me of incompetence? Or do you always look at me like that!’ She grins at that, at his acceptance of the tone she has set, so Mulder continues. ‘Because if you think you can do better…’

‘Oh I know I can do better. You’ve read my file so you know I’m a navy brat and you should probably know before we do this that I’m a pathological overachiever.’

Mulder’s mind goes into overdrive, wondering if “this” extends beyond the shooting range, if he will be allowed to witness the hunger that he saw a flash of in the laundry room outside the sphere of the academic. He scrambles for words that are equally provocative but still maintain the appearance of normalcy.

‘And what exactly is “this?” Is the best he can do, closing the gap between them until he can see her slim, white fingers grasped loosely around the grip of her gun and the dangerous quirk of her lip. Her tongue darts out to wipe away the smirk and she fixes him in her sights and lays out the terms of her challenge.

‘For now let’s stick to a shoot off. Fifteen yards and four clips, one standing strong-side, one prone, one kneeling weak-side and finish kneeling strong-side. One point for every shot on target and two for finishing first.’ The confidence of her tone makes Mulder begin to think he may have set himself up for failure but there is no way he is backing down now. He nods once and begins to walk back to his starting position, adding with what he hopes is nonchalance,

‘And what does the winner get?’

Scully loads her gun with a practiced click and grins at him wolfishly.

‘I’ll let you know after I win.’

* * *

She does win, not just that first head-to-head but the other two of the best of three and then every one of the increasingly random challenges that Mulder concocts with the excuse of needing to restore his pride. Really though he’s just drawing out his time with her, with this terrifying, beautifully relaxed creature who holds her weapon like it’s an afterthought but never misses a shot, who seriously considers trying to make a shot from upside down and between her legs before deciding it’s too dangerous. His tie has joins his jacket on the floor and her hair gets curlier and curlier as the evening wears on. They’re sharing the same space at the range now. Taking it in turns to fire a single shot from 25 feet and aiming for a little red X that Mulder had added to the latest target, right over where the groin would be on a real person. Scully nails it on her second attempt, the spot of colour obliterated by her bullet and Mulder winces.

‘Stone cold, Scully, stone cold. You didn’t even blink!’ She rolls her eyes at his falsely wounded tone.

‘Maybe if you kept your eyes open Mulder, you’d be batting more than a 92!’ He clutches his chest theatrically.

‘We can’t all be 100s Scully! If we were then how would the special ones stand out?’

Scully considers his question carefully and in the silence the careless humour of the last exchange simmers down to something different. She clicks the safety back onto her gun and Mulder follows suit. When she finally answers it’s not a comeback or a rebuttal but a simply worded question that speaks to a deeply held uncertainty.

‘Do you think I’m one of the special ones?’

Mulder only nods and this time her smile is small and grateful and the air softens between them and she drifts within his reach. The pads of his fingers brush the outside of her hand and find it cool despite the heat. He wants to weave his fingers with hers, to share his warmth and find that perfect middle ground between her careful blue and his questioning hazel. He might have done it too, location be damned, if the tannoy hadn’t buzzed to life, shattering their silence and informing them that it was 9pm and the range was closing. Scully steps out of his orbit, postponing the moment of truth and goes to gather her things.

‘So if the range is closing does that mean you’ll finally admit that I win?’

Mulder concedes.

‘Name your prize. I can offer you an advance look at the rest of the week’s course notes or maybe you’d like me to profile you? Alternately I was once told that I give excellent head massages or I could buy you a drink…just please don’t make me run naked down the hallway making ghost noises? My reputation is fragile enough as it is!’

Scully purses her lips as they exit the range and sign their weapons back in. A familiar poster on the corkboard behind the desk catches her eye.

‘Mulder.’ She says seriously. ‘I want a taco.’

* * *

The kitchen is long closed by the time they’ve crossed the campus and that eerie fridge-blue light filters through the empty cafeteria. Scully slows down, expecting Mulder to stop but her companion merely crosses to the serving counter, vaults it and approached the locked kitchen door.

By the time she catches up he’s tapped in a combination and is holding the door open for her.

‘Joyce who runs the kitchens here had a soft spot for me when I was a trainee,’ he explains, ‘I was the only one who would listen to her conspiracy theories so she let me in on the code for midnight snack purposes. JK-22-12-63 - it’s the-’

‘Kennedy assassination.’ Scully finishes. ‘Joyce is still a conspiracy nut, but apparently not paranoid enough to change the code in the last several years.’ Mulder gives a low whistle of appreciation as the kitchen door swings shut behind them, the light even dimmer in here. He goes for the light switch but Scully stops him,

‘Mulder we’re not supposed to be in here! Let’s not draw attention to it.’

He grins and does as she asks, enjoying, as he roots for leftovers, the delightful mix of reckless enthusiasm and law-abiding student that is Dana Scully. Soon, the chili beef is heating in the microwave and Mulder has located cheese, guacamole and enough taco shells to feed five.

Scully had assumed he’d be awkward in the kitchen and had been braced to take over just in order to feed herself. Instead she is charmed by the easy way in which Mulder moves about, finding napkins and plates and humming tunelessly as he works. Every now and then he looks across as if to check she’s still there, smiling an easy smile that feels more comfortable than it should so soon after their meeting. In less than ten minutes they are seated and eating, her on a step stool and him on a catering sized sack of rice, knees almost but not quite touching.

Neither of them had realised how hungry they were and satisfied mumblings replace  any sort of conversation as the seemingly insurmountable quantity of food dwindles to one last taco. Mulder eyes it, but before he can even form an argument, Scully has snapped it up and scarfed it.

‘Sorry Mulder,’ she sighs, patting her belly. ‘Winner takes all.’

It’s only getting distracted by the sight of a glob of salsa caught in the dip under her lip that stops Mulder from responding instinctively, from carelessly revealing that she can have all of him as well as all of the tacos. Instead of letting slip his premature affection, he simply loses the ability to speak, to think about anything aside from Scully’s lips and the distance between him and her. He can hear her speaking, see her hands punctuating her point but before he knows it, his hand is on her cheek, thumb skating her lip and catching the salsa as she inhales sharply. Her pulse accelerates under his palm.

‘We’re not supposed to be here,’ and this time she’s not just talking about the trespass but about the now non existent gap between their knees and their rapidly blossoming intimacy. That here, between two people who by rights should never have connected beyond the classroom, is a scenario in which all those cliches about meeting someone that changes everything are starting to make sense. It’s ridiculous. Dangerous. Mulder doesn’t care and he tells her so.

‘I’ve never been very good at doing what I’m supposed to Scully. But if you tell me to, I will let go of you right now and not be anything more than your instructor for the rest of my time here.’

Scully nods and brings her hand up to cover his. He holds his breath and waits for her to pull away, to release his hand and his heart with one regretful move. When she speaks instead, her voice is so low that the tone is unreadable.

‘That would probably be a good idea.’ Mulder squeezes his eyes shut in anticipation of her absence. And then her left hand joins her right on his face and he opens his eyes in shock to find blazing blue inches away and closing fast. Her next words whisper across his lips like a secret. ‘I think I’m bored of doing the right thing.’

The whisper becomes a roar.

How has he forgotten the intensity of her taste in just 24 hours? How has he made it this far through the evening this close by her side without consuming her. Mulder thinks that she might be consuming him and he welcomes it, pulling her hips until she stands between his legs, taller than him by a little and filling all of his senses with small noises and soft curves. Scully sounds. He wants all of them, from the clear bell of her voice in a lecture hall to the tiny purr she makes when he drops his hands to her ass, greedily following the lines of her body. She is demanding too, small fingers make fast work of his top three buttons and she presses herself ever closer, stopping just short of climbing into his lap as Mulder teeters on the shifting base of the rice sack. The unsteadiness of his footing, the recklessness of their location distracts him just barely from the burning path her hot little tongue is tracing down towards his collarbone.

This time he is the one trapped, she is in control, nails raking through his hair to the delicate skin behind his ears. God he loves this, he could get addicted to this and that thought is enough to cut through his desire. He gasps and pulls away from the ferocity of her kisses, burying his face in her neck as he fights for the last of his sanity. He wants this, wants her so badly and yet something is holding him back. Yesterday in the laundry room had been reckless enough but here, where they shouldn’t be, a hasty decision could destroy this brand new relationship, one which over the course of just one evening has become so very important to him.

‘Not here Scully. Not like this.’ And the disagreeing “hmm” she delivers into the top of his head, vibrating across his scalp is almost enough to change his mind. Exerting all his willpower, Mulder pulls his hands to his side and leans back, putting cool air between their flushed faces.

Scully is blazingly beautiful in the half-light, red hair somehow brighter in the almost darkness, tousled and fiery and breathing hard. God he, he wants to touch her. Why isn’t he touching her?

She waits for him to speak and the silence is loaded with half excuses and the usual lies people tell to end this kind of liaison. But not one of those excuses can survive the intensity of the space between them.

‘Not now - I don’t want it to be like this.’ Mulder repeats, unable to find a better way to verbalise how much he wants to possess her for as long as she will give herself to him, how much this already means to him and how afraid he is that they might throw it away for ten minutes in a cold kitchen. He tries to put all those thoughts into his face because Scully is staring at him with an intensity that would be terrifying if it were anyone else. Like somehow if she looks at him long enough she will be able to unlock all of his secrets. Mulder thinks maybe she could. He thinks maybe he would let her.

Then she blinks and the moment is gone. Scully takes a step back and then another, folding her arms tightly across her chest as she takes in a deep breath and releases it slowly. She nods slightly, eyes flicking from him to her feet as she processes what has just happened.

‘I wish you’d thought of that before I threw myself at you.’ And there is a hint of rebuke in her voice, an edge that Mulder immediately regrets inspiring. ‘What exactly do you want, Agent Mulder?’

He flinches at the formality of his job title. It seems so alien on lips he has already memorised the contours of, but it is too late to backtrack now, to keep kissing her until he finds the right way to tell her exactly what he wants… and what he fears. Especially when he is not quite sure what that is. But Scully turns to leave and he tries again.

‘Scully-’ He can’t let her go so simply. She stops and half turns back to him, waiting for an explanation. Mulder doesn’t have one, can’t think of anything to make her stay and so he takes the coward’s way out, pointing to the side of her face that was so recently pressed tightly to his.

‘You have salsa in your hair.’

Scully smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes and them, in a sad echo of the night before, she walks away.


	3. Washout Wednesday

Her seat is empty.

Mulder is three minutes late starting his lecture, delaying, pretending to look for some irrelevant sheet of notes in his bag because Dana Scully’s seat is empty. Out of the corner of his eye he scans the room, hoping against hope that she has simply chosen to sit elsewhere. Maybe she is hiding at the back because of how things ended in the kitchen or maybe she's challenging him, sitting right at the front, forcing him to acknowledge her stony stare as punishment for his fickleness. He spent much of the night tossing and turning, imagining scenarios in which he would somehow use his lecture to apologise. He had considered slipping her another note, some witty, winning sentence to make it clear he had stopped her wandering hands, not because he didn't want her, but because she deserved more than a careless fumble in a kitchen. He wanted to tell her that somehow, even though he barely knows her and has nothing to offer any woman, he wants to explore her slowly, to understand her, to show her parts of himself that have been shut away in the long years since Samantha vanished.

He hadn't arrived at a perfect conclusion and was hoping that seeing her, meeting the questioning blue of her eyes, would shake something loose. Never had he considered that she might quite simply not be there.

11.05 and the murmur of the assembled students turns sour, theories and accusations gathering as to what is holding them all up. Mulder doubts they'll understand why one empty seat is causing him to pause and so, with a last glance at the door, he begins.

* * *

Every logical part of Scully tells her that to an invitation to assist on a real case as a trainee is a huge honour, that the sudden influx of John Does to the morgue and the chief pathologist’s request that she provide an extra pair of hands is exactly the sort of  recognition she has been hoping for. Just three weeks in and she is making a mark. Had it happened last week she would already be mentally composing a letter to her father, a respectful “I told you so” as she excels, proving to him that all his concerns were unfounded. She should be blissfully content.

Which makes the fact that she can’t drag her eyes away from the wall clock doubly frustrating.

It’s 11:25 and across campus in Lecture Theatre B, Agent Mulder will currently be running through the most common mistakes in profiling. Or maybe he’s already moved on to discussing the impact of mental disorders on a profile. The reading, when she’d finally folded the corner with his note away and refused to let it distract her further, had been fascinating. As a hard scientist Scully had never really considered that the line between sociopathy and psychopathy, between masochism and sadism could be as subtle and insidious as any neurological condition with a physical manifestation. She had been genuinely looking forward to the lecture today, determined to approach it with renewed academic vigour and no personal feelings whatsoever. Two days at the mercy of Agent Mulder’s mercurial moods and unclear intentions was more than enough. That should have been the end of things, mind over matter and no room for emotions. It was the logical thing to do, after two days it should have been _easy_ to do, the evidence certainly supported that as the right course of action.

Mulder had asked her last night for certainty, only to then change his own mind. For her that carries weight beyond any of the more traditional reasons not to extend their involvement, if that term is even an appropriate one for their momentary dalliances. Dana Scully is, and always has been, a creature of cause and effect, of well-reasoned conclusions and black and white certainty. From what she’s seen, Agent Mulder colours so far outside the lines of predictability that no matter how electric their chemistry, they will only ever be capable of disappointing each other. It’s completely clear to her. And yet she still feels disappointed, is still wishing herself across campus to that featureless room where his gentle monotone draws pictures of the dangerous minds he’s witnessed.

‘Miss Scully!’ A sharp voice cuts through her reverie and she narrowly avoids cutting herself with the scalpel she had been fetching. Forcing her mind back into the present, away from the mesmeric tick of the second hand, Scully hands off the instrument and steps back to watch the Y incision. If only emotions and expectations could be so simply dissected after their death as the body that houses them. Maybe then she could excise whatever strange curiosity Fox Mulder held for her, close the wound and move on.

* * *

He shouldn’t be here.

Under no circumstances whatsoever should a fully qualified member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation be stooped in a woman’s closet. Especially not when the closet in question is deep in the strictly off-limits female accommodation block at Quantico academy and the owner of the wardrobe has no idea he is in there.

Mulder had realised the ridiculousness of his scheme the second the door to 10B had swung shut behind him and the adrenaline of not being spotted jimmying the lock had passed. The swing from euphoria to shame had been instantaneous and he’d been seconds away from retracing his steps back to his room, where he’d been pacing when this whole mad plan had begun, when the ping of the elevator sent him back into the room in a hurry. The hurry had turned to blind panic as footsteps had stopped outside the door and an unfamiliar female voice had started making weekend plans whilst fumbling with the lock. Trapped, Mulder had thrown himself into the closest available hiding place, not quite getting the closet door shut before a broad-shouldered blonde with a messy bun had rushed in and started tossing items on the desk across the room.

Mulder silently curses himself again. In his recklessness he has forgotten that even if he made it here undetected, all trainees have roommates. The quiet moment he’d so dreamily imagined when looking up Scully’s room allocation is, at best, flawed and at worst, about to get him fired.

The sound of the door opening again momentarily distracts him from his idiocy, and this time it delivers the object of his suicide mission. Scully’s scrubbed clean face and vivid hair are unable to mask the tiredness painted on her every feature. She greets her roommate quietly before unloading her bag, dragging a fuzzy robe off a hook on the back of the door and then passing out of Mulder’s line of sight. A creak of springs to his right suggests she’s sitting on her bed and the room settles into a tense silence. Well tense for Mulder anyway, as he tries desperately not to move, his stance uncertain on what feels like a pair of tennis shoes and Scully’s already familiar scent lingering in his nostrils.

After what seems an eternity there is a knock at the door and the roommate leaves, pausing to invite Scully down to dinner and offering to bring her something back when she refuses.

* * *

By the time she makes it to the promised land of her bed, Scully has been on her feet for ten hours and the formaldehyde scent has given her a headache. She’s assisted in three autopsies and redeemed her early distractedness by being sharp, asking the right questions and pre-empting the needs of the pathologist. Now she just needs to find some sort of second wind, some previously untapped reserve of energy to help her catch up on the full day’s work she’s missed.

When Carla invites her to join their usual group at dinner she finds herself refusing. She needs to eat, she knows she needs to eat, but all she wants is to be alone and not think or talk for a few moments.

Throwing her arms wide with a noisy groan, Scully flops flat on her back before rolling her head to one side and starting to try and massage some of the tension from her neck.

From this new angle she wonders idly why her wardrobe is open and is about to dismiss it as nothing when the door subtly but unmistakably moves. Scully freezes, heart in her throat and waits.

The door moves again and now she can see clearly the shadow of feet in the inch between the door and the carpet. Trying not to make a sound and wincing at every minute creak of the bed she edges towards the intruder.

* * *

Mulder has not heard more than the odd settling noise from the bed since Scully’s groan stopped his escape in its tracks. He’d waited five minutes from her roomate’s exit, convinced himself that the silence meant she was asleep and made it halfway out of the cupboard before stopping in his tracks.

The guttural husk of her groan had shot fear straight to his adrenal glands and something equally instinctual but far less appropriate to his balls. Even as he is terribly aware that he is likely only a few seconds from being caught lurking in her cupboard, a small part of his mind is recalling the night before and painting pictures of things Scully might be doing to elicit that sort of noise. Delicious things. The kind of things that would make his presence here all the more unforgivable but also make him want to stay, to participate.

In the endless seconds since the groan, Mulder has whittled the potential outcomes down to three. One, Scully is asleep and he can escape as planned. Two, she is not asleep and will respond to his intrusion with a perfectly justified call to HR and an equally reasonable harassment suit. Or three, and this is the one that’s stopping him taking that next step towards freedom, she will catch him and ask him to stay and he’ll get to learn some more of the noises Scully makes when she can’t help herself.

What he hasn’t considered is the possibility of a loud bang being the last thing he hears as the wooden door of the wardrobe makes brutal contact with the side of his head and the room fades to black.

* * *

Shit.

Scully looks down at the six feet of unconscious Mulder on her floor and swears again. Loudly.

When she’d slammed the door open, the wood still reverberating from the force of her bodyweight, she had been ready to confront whoever had been playing peeping Tom. She was expecting a stranger or maybe one of the idiots that Carla liked to hang out with on weekends, some frat boy playing a stupid prank. She had not expected to meet the unfocussed hazel gaze of Agent Mulder as he raised a hand towards his head in confusion, swayed slightly and then crumpled to the ground.

Shit.

It takes longer than usual for the doctor in her to kick in, for her to process the fact that the creeper in the closet was the same person she’d spent large portions of the last two days thinking about, but eventually Scully remembers herself sufficiently to drop to her knees and check his pulse.

He’s alive. Invariably. She knew she hadn’t hit him hard enough to do that sort of damage and even as she considers her next move, how best to remove the very unconscious, definitely non-invited visitor from the women only section of the campus, his eyelids quiver and he stirs.

‘Hello Scully.’ Mulder mumbles, reaching for her hand. The simple comfort of his touch after the strangeness of the last few minutes momentarily arrests the bubbling anger she feels at his imposition. He looks so harmless, sprawled on her floor, his long limbs stretching from the closet almost as far as Carly’s bed and his eyes a hazy unfocussed brown-green. How does he do this? Disarm her good intentions and clear away a day’s worth of mental barriers and rational decisions until they’re back in that first lecture, fighting words suspended between them and eyes intensely locked.

Mulder is making small circles on the back of her hand and humming gently, woozily delighted by her non-refusal of his touch.  Scully realises that this is the first time someone has touched her in so tender a way, without agenda or expectation, since her mother said goodbye all those weeks ago. She hadn’t realised how badly she’d missed it. But she can’t have it from Mulder, not when things are already so impossibly confusing between them. It is one thing to desire him but another entirely to allow him to comfort her, he already has too much power to unsettle and distract her and so she pulls away sitting back on her heels.

‘What the hell are you doing here Agent Mulder?!’ Scully injects harshness she doesn’t feel into her voice and folds her arms as if that will somehow protect her from the softness of his expression. He has the decency to blush, to cast his eyes about the room for a good excuse before they settle back on her face, bright with a vulnerability she had not expected.

‘I… I just wanted to see you. You weren’t where you were supposed to be today…’ He sounds so helpless that Scully can’t stop herself. She reaches past the “Do Not Enter” sign she’s mentally erected to him to brush his hair aside and his wince when she finds a rapidly rising bump where his head met the door stirs up a mixture of guilt and frustration in her.

‘Oh, brother.’ Scully forgets to remove her fingers from his head, running them down briefly to cup his cheek in a gesture she promises herself is purely concern, only to rapidly withdraw when he leans into her touch and his lashes flutter closed.

‘Mulder no! You can’t go to sleep here. You probably have a concussion and you can’t be in here! How did you even get in?’

He chuckles drunkenly and sits up, listing slightly to one side as he uses Carla’s bed and end table to drag himself to a standing position, explaining as he goes.

‘I climbed in the kitchen window on the ground floor – ow - and came up the back stairs. No cameras, I used to visit… I think her name was Amy? Back in my academy days. It’s not so hard. Unlike your closet door. Jeez Scully! I’m guessing you aced self-defence? Ouch. Anyway… I know it’s stupid, creepy even. I didn’t really think… I just wanted to see you Scully – I - I missed you. And I guess you don’t exactly feel the same way and I’m sorry I scared you. You could have just told me to leave though?’

And now that he’s standing, no longer prostrate at her feet Scully feels her sympathy and concern begin to transform back into the frustration and anger she felt as she stalked away from the kitchen the night before.

‘For fucks sake Mulder! Why can’t you do _anything_ like a normal human? I was asked to assist with an autopsy today and if you’d checked your office hours sign up for tomorrow you’d see I’m down to come and catch up today’s session at 2pm. Or if you couldn’t have waited that long then why not send me an email? Or call up on the intercom? If you spent your time doing things the normal way instead of treating every day like it’s some grand conspiracy, every person like they’re some sort of conundrum, maybe you’d find yourself in a hell of a lot less trouble! Do you ever stop and think before you do things?’ Scully’s voice has risen to a shrill fury over the course of  her tirade. How could such a brilliant man communicate so much with a few looks and then completely fail to translate his thoughts and desires into anything she had some hope of understanding. Yesterday it seemed he’d wanted nothing more to do with her the personal sense, he’d let her walk away from him and not even tried to stop her. He’d said goodnight with some stupid platitude about salsa only to follow it up with some misguided quest to her dorm room.

He is a mess.

And Scully doesn’t have space in her life for a mess right now. She steps back, unable to watch his reactions to her tirade, unwilling to let him see the complex emotions she has no doubt are written all over face. She is too tired for this fight, too tired for this man. He needs to go.

‘Mulder you need to get to the doctors and get checked out for concussion. Do you need me to help you get there?’ She could check him herself but she can’t get that close, the memory of his pupils dilating at her touch is enough to make her mouth dry. There’s a pause before he answers.

‘I’ll be fine Scully.’ Mulder’s tone is as unsteady as his footsteps, dragging whatever he had come here to say across the floor to her door. She looks up and the sag of his shoulders, the weight with which his hand grabs the door jamb is enough to pull her back into his orbit, offering him her arm and her help.

‘Mulder, you need help, I’ll help you get to the doctor’s office,’ but he shakes his head, again rejecting what she offers and Scully’s hand falls to her side.

Stupid.

She doesn’t realises she spoke her thought aloud until he catches her chin and drags her gaze up to his. A fierce lucidity fights its way to the surface of Mulder’s countenance and he steadies himself with one hand on her shoulder, the other cementing their connection as he says goodbye.

‘No Scully. The only stupid thing would be you being caught with me right now. I can get caught leaving and chalk it up to aliens or concussion or something, but if they see you with me you will never be able to escape the damage to your reputation. Sleeping with a lecturer is bad enough but me… your career deserves better. You deserve better. You’re one of the special ones Scully… I… you have to protect that.’

This time when he kisses her it is small and sad. It tastes like an ending and when Mulder slips out of her door and limps down the corridor Scully can’t watch him go.

She shuts the door tight and goes back to bed, pulling the covers around herself in a lacklustre embrace. The reading can wait.


	4. Three Acts on a Thursday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder and Scully try different tactics to resolve the aftermath of Wednesday but neither really works out...

Until today, Scully had never looked forward to Thursday morning circuit training. She can more than hold her own in any classroom and quickly climbs the ranks in every new skill the Academy teaches, combat included, but when it comes down to brute strength she has to admit her limits. No amount of hard work can make the top of that scrambling wall lower down when they run the the assault course or increase the length of her stride to keep up with men a full foot taller than her. Usually Thursday mornings are four hours of fierce effort and frustration at her limits. Today though, a brief holiday from her own mind is exactly what Scully needs. She sets off around the track in a blaze of adrenaline, determined to run all thoughts of Agent Mulder out of her being, to lose her emotions in the surging blood that will drive her across the finish line two seconds under her personal best. She plunges through the water obstacle feeling only the cold, relishes the burn in her hands as she swings across the ladder frame. She empties herself of everything but the essentials, the next step, the next breath, and by the time she collapses back in the changing rooms, muddy and breathless, she is sure that she has shaken off the strangeness of the week.

She came to Quantico looking for this kind of challenge; medicine allowed her to help others but sometimes it felt like she was losing herself. Here at the FBI she is already of pushing past her limits and finding a new side of herself that she thinks she likes. This Dana Scully is using her mind, helping people and making a difference in a positive way instead of just treating what has already gone wrong. And that’s the problem with Mulder. She hardly knows him and already she can see that there is so much under the surface that he needs to fix. He is the sort of distraction that she cannot afford to embrace, his personal obsession and professional life are so closely tangled they have brought a brilliant man to the brink of disgrace.

Scully’s rebellion has been smaller and it is enough. It is one thing to walk away from one career to pursue something else, but it is another thing entirely to question the very science and rationalism upon which both of those careers depend. Mulder’s work dwells in the shadows of uncertainty, thrives there and she cannot allow herself to be seduced by it. Some devious voice at the back of her mind tells her it would be worth it, that theories exist to be disproven, to be challenged but she drowns it out with scalding hot water and vigorous scrubbing. She is at the FBI to become an Agent, to use science and scepticism to serve the American people. That much at least her family can understand. She instinctively knows that they could not even begin to comprehend the part of their dutiful little Dana who might follow a man like Fox Mulder into the darkness, just to see what is there. She herself barely understands that part of her persona. She hasn’t listened to it in a long while and now is not the time to start.

This afternoon must be an ending.

She will see Mulder one last time, catch up the notes missed and make it clear, kindly and firmly, that she is not a mystery for him to solve, nor a damsel in need of rescuing from the boredom of convention. She will thank him  for his insights, for the adventure and then tell him goodbye. Maybe in the future they’ll pass in the corridors at the Hoover building, exchange smiles and nods, or make small talk at the Christmas party. But the reckless energy of his kiss, the wild exploration of his mind, the unsolved universe of his words… those must be left behind; locked in the laundry room and the kitchen and her closet or driven off in Agent Mulder’s car when he leaves at the end of the week.

Scully steps out of the shower clad in steely certainty. It is the right thing to do.

* * *

Mulder sleeps through breakfast.

He slams off the alarm he forgot to unset for a lecture free day and pulls the scratchy regulation blankets over his face, imagining himself back in the shelter of his worn leather sofa. The pain medication the infirmary prescribed has left him groggy and he vows not to take it again. It’s one thing to have a throbbing pain in one side of your head to remind you of an idiotic mistake and another to feel like a totally different person. There was no concussion, just an impressive knock, roughly the same size and shape as the bruise on his heart that had formed when he saw the look in Dana Scully’s eyes after he kissed her goodbye.

It wasn’t her anger that had undone him. Anger is a volatile energy that burns hot and fast. It can easily melt into passion or into nothingness. Nor was it the surprise or the question that had chased his lips as they drew away from hers. It was the resolution that had stood strong behind each fleeting expression. Steely certainty, the firmness of a reasoned decision made and made for good. The set of Scully’s jaw, the steadiness of her gaze and the determined stillness of her body under his kiss all told him that whatever they had been in that laundry room, whatever they had shared on the firing range… it was over.

How ridiculous that he should care so much. What does it say about him as a man approaching thirty that after only three days this is more meaningful a relationship to him than any he has attempted in his adult life? Is he really so lonely that a few exciting conversations and heated looks can burn through all the barriers he has so carefully constructed around himself. Is Dana Scully, his student for God’s sake, really so extraordinary that just a few clever comments, a playful evening and two heady moments of release could have inserted her so completely in his world?

It’s not just ridiculous, Mulder thinks. It’s impossible. Or it should be. It must be. A brilliant mind is undeniably attractive and coupled with such unconventional beauty, an infatuation is not an unnatural reaction. But more than that? Mulder believes in many things but love at first sight, or first debate, is not one of them.

Which means this hollow feeling must be hangover from the painkillers. That’s all he can allow it to be. And whatever it is, Mulder doesn’t think that he’s up to upholding his office hours this afternoon.

Dragging himself, blankets and all to the phone he calls in a favour.

* * *

 

At 3pm, Scully steps out of her one-on-one satisfyingly clear on several previously missed points of profile-related information and utterly devoid of the closure she was seeking. She’s not proud to admit that she had mentally rehearsed her parting statements ahead of her expected meeting with Mulder, apologising for yesterday’s overreaction, borrowing platitudes from previous breakups and shoring them up with the abundant reasons that whatever strange flirtation they have been conducting is a disaster in the making. She was ready to walk out with her head held high and her affairs in order, and prepared to sit indifferently through Friday’s assessment which would be her last ever contact with Agent Mulder.

Instead she has spent an hour with Professor Tulse, a former consultant of the VCU, who is covering Mulder’s office hours while he recovers from “a nasty fall”. The older woman is kind, patient and an excellent coach, mistaking Scully’s distraction for academic slowness, and for that she is grateful. She now truly is prepared for the test, a factor she is embarrassed to admit had been overshadowed rather by her preoccupation with clearing things up with Mulder.

That embarrassment adds to the gathering storm of emotions that has been brewing all week and drives her into her dorm room with a slammed door and a groan.

Carla looks up from her desk with sympathy.

‘This workload sure is a bitch huh?’

Scully agrees. It would take far to long to explain that the true “bitch” in this scenario was the workload, compounded by a man, compounded by the impossibility of that man and her apparent inability to close the issue, with or without his involvement. The need to be somewhere else, to be _someone_ else, just for a little while, is overwhelming and the words escape before her saner self intervenes.

‘Hey Carla? Wanna grab the guys and get some beers? I think I may go insane if I don’t get off this campus for a bit so the first round’s on me!’

Carla turns slowly in her chair, arms folded and eyebrows raised,

‘Who are you and what have you done with my studious roommate?’

Scully laughs. It feels good to just throw caution to the wind and release some tension. She can regret it later.

‘C’mon. I’ll give you a half hour to get ready but any longer and I’ll change my mind. What else are free afternoons for?!’ Scully’s inner angel is screaming at her to look at the mountain of reading, to think of tomorrow’s assessments but Carla is up and grinning and the battle is won.

‘Make it fifteen and promise me we’ll be good and come back early enough to get some work done? I need sane Dana to still be in there somewhere - I’m not sure I’m cut out to be the responsible one in this dynamic!’

See? Scully reasons as she rushes through the shower and pulls on snug jeans and a plaid shirt, there’s plenty of time to have fun and get things done. One drink. Maybe two. Just to get him, them and everything else off her mind, Then she’ll get back to being reliable old Dana, well read, rested and completely focused on the job at hand.

* * *

Mulder regrets accepting Jerry’s drinks invitation the second his butt hits the booth. His former partner is the same sneaky, conniving bastard as always and if Mulder hadn’t been newly awake, maudlin and looking for a distraction then he probably would have been able to come up with an excuse. But he wasn’t. He didn’t. And now Jerry sits between him and the door, a half finished beer in front of him, expounding at length on the details of his latest glorious success.

Mulder regards his empty glass and wonders how long it will take to escape. How many of the “glory years” he will be forced to relive, how many painkillers he can take on beer and an empty stomach back at his room and how much worse this day can get before it’s over.

His answer rushes in on a blast of fresh air and frivolity, red hair gleaming across the room and washing up against the bar breathless and flushed. Mulder sinks down in his seat, torn between staying out of sight and wanting to watch as Scully whizzes around her group, taking orders and slamming a handful of notes on the bar with more than the necessary force. She’s wearing jeans that hug her ass and a soft shirt swings open to reveal a snug black tee and the intoxicating whiteness of her collarbones. Jerry’s monotone fades to nothing as Mulder strains to hear her voice, to gauge her mood after his cowardly avoidance of their meeting but the room is too loud. Instead he simply watches as the group around her collect drinks and dissolve away until she is left alone at the bar with just one guy. He’s standing too close to her, leaning into her space and Scully is studiously not looking when he leans in still further to speak to her. Mulder decides his name is Chad. He looks like a Chad, all too-tight shirt and macho bravado, making his “power move” before the night even begins. As Mulder sits and hates him, Scully counts her change with a determined focus, seemingly unruffled. She smiles politely when Chad throws his head back and laughs loudly enough that even Mulder can hear, and then slides a few inches away when his arm finally comes to rest against hers. As as soon as Scully is done, she grabs her drink and goes to move away.

Chad grabs her wrist and Mulder sees red.

He’s on his feet, jostling the table and sending Jerry’s drink crashing to the floor. Even if the noise hadn’t drawn the eyes of everyone in the bar, Jerry’s swearing would have; his indignation blocks Mulder’s route to Scully and her suitor. It wouldn’t have mattered, Mulder's more than ready to shove his former partner out of the way until Dana Scully’s frosty glare stops him in his tracks.

She’s furious, whether with him generally, more specifically with his presence in the bar or with the goggling trainee who just put his hand on her uninvited, Mulder is not sure. He is not sure he wants to know. Whichever option it is, Scully holds his gaze, unflinching, and then grabs a handful of Chad’s shirt and uses it to yank his attention back to her and pull his face down to her level. She leans in and Mulder feels sick; surely she wouldn’t kiss a guy like Chad just to make a point? She doesn’t. Nothing so petty for Dana Scully and instead she begins to mutter something in Chad’s ear, her eyes still burning into Mulder’s and lips barely moving. It doesn’t take a trained psychologist to see Chad stiffen, his hands so confident before beginning to clench and worry at his sides as first his ears and then the whole back of his neck turns red. When Scully lets him up he steps immediately away from her, as if stung, and Scully responds with folded arms, an unsympathetic nod and a speedy departure. She and her beer are soon gone from sight leaving a slightly unsteady Chad and a slightly sodden Mulder in her wake.

When Mulder finally remembers to move he finds Jerry is returning from the bar with two more beers and a long suffering look.

‘‘These are on you, and my dry cleaning bill too!’ He intones with what is probably intended to be good natured humour. ‘Now sit back down and tell me what you think about this profile I’m working. It’s the least you can do after whatever that was!’

This time Mulder doesn’t argue because the only thing more embarrassing than staying would be leaving. Somehow everything he has tried to escape from has caught up with him tonight: Jerry, Violent Crimes, profiling and Dana Scully. He downs half his beer in one gulp. Something tells him that whatever universal force he has somehow pissed off is probably not done with him tonight.

* * *

Three beers in and the bar is starting to look more golden than it did when she arrived. Scully tries to remember the last time she drank three beers and gets to last year’s July 4th picnic before she can. She needs to get out more. To live more. Starting tonight. Because she is damned if she’s leaving before Mulder.

Besides she’s having fun. She’s squidged on a bench seat with Carla and Jenny from next door and they’re laughing about some dumb rumour that she’s already forgotten.  Tthis is what normal people do in the evenings. They drink beer and laugh and flirt and enjoy themselves. She can do that too, can’t she? Well maybe two of three anyway. Judging by the uncomfortable glances shooting her way from Chet and his friends she assumes her little pep talk on the consequences of touching her without permission is now public knowledge, and she can probably rule out any further flirtation this evening. But she can still drink beer and laugh, and as she sips on her fourth pint things seem to be getting increasingly funny.

Especially his face. Mulder’s. The way he’d stalled when she looked at him, jaw clenched and eyes blazing black with something rather different than the desire she saw turn him wild before. He’d stood there, oblivious to the beer pouring off the table-top and down his pant leg, oblivious to the petulant strop of his drinking buddy, and just looked at her. Like he wouldn’t look away till he knew she was okay, like Chet would probably be leaving the bar with a black eye if she gave him any sign she wasn’t in control. But she was. Scully doesn’t need Agent Mulder to teach her, or to defend her, or to sleep with her, though two of the three might have been nice, and so she shows him as much, daring him with her eyes to intervene as she cuts Chet down to size, and stalks off victorious.

That was a couple hours ago but Mulder hasn’t left yet, she’s had one eye on the door so she knows when she can go without conceding the territory. Scully wonders if he’s moved at all, finding the thought of him still standing frozen, face blazing but stock still on the edge of a busy bar, exceptionally amusing. She starts to giggle, imagining him locked in place, even as the bar closes, a statue of protective male indignation that eventually becomes part of  the decor, has coats hung on it, gets tripped over! Her laughter grows, loosened by the beer, until it’s ringing clearly through her, tears streaming down her cheeks. The rest of her table laughs at her merriment, unsure of the cause but seduced by the giddy freedom of her keening hysteria, and in the utter silliness of the moment Scully feels the tension that has been stewing in her belly begin to subside. Perhaps four beers is irresponsible, perhaps her laughter is ridiculous but god does it feel good to let go.

* * *

 

Mulder could pick her laugh out of a crowd at a rock concert, out of a bank of anonymous laughter, and right now it’s cutting through the buzz of the bar and hitting him right where it hurts. The hours have passed slowly with Jerry, empty glasses now littering the table as his ex-partner once again stumbles to his feet and sways his way to the restroom. From the concealed end of the bar comes another peal of Scully-laughter. It has the same freedom as the moans she made when he touched her but is amplified, joyous and Mulder is intensely jealous of whoever is making her laugh like that.

She sounds ecstatic. She sounds free. She sounds like a young woman should sound several drinks in with friends and having fun. This is what she needs, Mulder reasons, this is why he stayed away. And why he should leave now. Suddenly his bizarre protective urge seems suffocating and misguided. If Scully wanted his help she would have asked. She’d made it pretty clear the night before that he had no place in her world, so why was he prolonging his departure?

The alcohol has loosened his mind enough that he can now admit to himself that he wants her and wants her badly. That he would go, and has gone, to extraordinary lengths to ensure her presence in his life. It’s not logical and it isn’t who he is but something about who _she_ is has changed things. Which is something he needs to deal with. But not here. Not by sitting waiting for a glimpse of her leaving, maybe alone or maybe on the arm of some random boy, tripping giddily back to the life she so clearly wants and so richly deserves. Mulder needs to go, go now, and work out whatever it is Dana Scully has unlocked in him somewhere far away from the temptation of her person. The Vineyard maybe. A long walk on a blustery beach sounds pretty cathartic right now and as Mulder gathers his coat and leaves, telling the barkeep to give his best to Jerry, he decides that that’s where he will go this weekend. Where better to figure out what comes next in the hapless quest his life has become than the place it all began?

* * *

The fourth beer sits uneasily in Scully’s stomach and she turns down a fifth, remembering with a queasiness born of overindulgence and neglected responsibility that they have assessments less than twelve hours away. Extricating Carla from the lap of Joe or Jeff or whatever his name is proves impossible, but she is eventually successful in steering her roommate out, still attached at the mouth to this latest boy and the struggle sobers her up a little. As she guides them through the crowded bar and out to the cab she has ordered, Scully is glad of the distraction that keeping two handsy, inebriated people affords her, preventing her from being tempted to glance over and see if Agent Mulder is still in the corner booth, frozen statue or otherwise. In her current state she’s not sure what seeing him might do to her so she sighs with relief when the door swings shut behind them and they are engulfed by the night.

Scully checks her watch. 11:25 pm. Not disastrous, not ideal but not disastrous, and then braces to start to manoeuvre her companions into the back seat of the car. She’s successfully posted Joe/Jeff in and is trying to get Carla in after him when her roommate’s eyes widen and she points over Scully’s shoulder, a huge grin on her face.

‘Hey Dana lookee! It’s the profile guy! The cute one from the lectures! You need a ride Mr Profile guy?’ she manages before stumbling back and folding somehow into the cab. Scully turns, hoping Carla is wrong, to find Mulder standing sheepishly on the sidewalk. He raises one hand and shrugs, his voice clear and even as he begins to refuse.

‘It’s fine. I can wait for another cab or start walking. It’s only a couple miles. You guys enjoy the end of your night-’

‘Don’t be silly sir!’ Carla interrupts, beginning to climb back out of the cab to the drivers displeasure, the meter starting to click up as he loses patience. ‘It’s late, you have test to run tomorrow right? And we have space! Dana will come in the back with us and you can go up front. Easy!’

Scully casts about for a reasonable excuse as Mulder again tries to refuse but the cab driver decides enough is enough and issues an ultimatum. He’s leaving in 30 seconds, regardless of who is in the car and with Joe/Jeff adding his voice, “Just get in the car dude” to the fray there is no time to escape it.

28 seconds later Mulder slams the passenger door shut and glances back to where Scully is perched on the furthest edge of her seat, face half shadowed by the streetlight. By the time they make it onto the main road Carla and her catch are once again making out and the cab descends into a dense silence.

Scully tries to stare out of the window, to feign indifference to the passenger in the front seat but alcohol and all the feelings she’s conveniently forgotten when tying off the loose ends of Mulder-gate, draw her eyes inexorably towards him. She can feel him watching her. She is glad he is watching her and so she makes sure of him, planning to look away as soon as her theory is proven. 

It’s not that easy.

Mulder’s gaze is no sneaking side glance in the rearview, he is turned in his seat, eyes sharp even in shadow as his bottom lip, slightly open, is kissed over and again by the alternating light and shade of passing streetlamps. He is watching her like he did in that lecture, before things were complicated by reality and she wants him, in that moment, the same way she did then. Scully wants him without the strings of personality or the expectation of knowing more about one another than names, a few small details and how the other tastes in a stolen moment in a laundry room. She closes her eyes for a moment and wishes them back there, back in that giddy moment and when she looks up again she knows he feels the same. Gone is the tortured gaze of the man who staggered from her room last night and the confused man who pushed her away in the kitchen. In the no-man’s-land of the cab, prevented by company from settling into their same pattern of falling too fast and running away, they stare at one another, unflinching and the complications begin to fall away.

Mulder wants her badly, it’s written all over his face; in the flickering pulse at his neck, and where the clench of his hand on his lapel is all that stops him reaching for her. 

And she wants him. The lamplight leeches the colour from her face but the heat of her blush is as unmistakable as the scent of him drifting backwards to overwhelm her. Scully breathes it in, taking him into her blood with her air and feeling it burn through her veins to where it surges downwards as her body remembers how he felt pressed up against her. She’s tipsy on beer but drunk on the thought of him ,and as he watches her with clear eyes all of her resolutions and intentions regarding closure seem excessive and unimportant. Fox Mulder is probably not the love of her life but he could be one hell of an adventure, an experiment, even if it’s just for one night.

And that’s all he’s asking her for. Not an abandonment of everything she trusts in, not a commitment to his cause. Just her. He is wordlessly asking her, not to change her world for him, but just one thing. 

One simple question with a yes/no answer.

‘When this car stops Scully, will you stay with me?’

And every fiber of her tells him yes.

* * *

Mulder is briefly worried when the cab leaves that they will need an excuse to separate from Scully’s roommate and her boyfriend but he needn’t have worried. The two of them stumble into the nearby bus shelter and pick up where they left off.

He tosses an amused look at Scully but the raw hunger he sees on her face transforms that humour into irritation that he hadn’t thought of the bus shelter first. He wants to touch her, to slide his palm across the silk of her skin again and this time to taste it, to learn her inch by inch until he can recreate her from memory. But how? His mind goes briefly blank as he maps out the campus, wracking his memory for some place private but accessible, someplace warm where they can forget the world and enjoy each other. Before he can work it out, Scully’s small hand is in his, and he’s so lost in the thrill of it he barely notices where she is leading him. They cut around the back of the admin building, to her accommodation where she pauses.

‘Are you up to making it upstairs again?’ Her voice is low and needy and Mulder is about to tell her he would scale the building without a harness to get to her when he has a realisation. He grins crookedly and tugs her in, ghosting a kiss across her lips as he tells her,

‘I would but I’ve been idiotic. My room is on the ground floor. And I don’t have a roommate.’

Scully grins back.

‘Lead the way!’ and he does, not stopping until they are stood under his window, lost in the midnight shadow of the building. They stop slightly too close together, and though he knows touching her now may break the dam too soon, Mulder can’t help gently tucking a stray strand of hair behind Scully’s ear. She shivers at his touch, her eyes dipping shut as she draws a shaky breath and it’s too much. He can’t wait and she meets him halfway, desperate to taste, to touch, to feel instead of think.

Mulder thinks she tastes different in the night air, sweet despite the beer, cooler and clearer as she washes through him, dragging closed the remaining inches that separate them until he is flush to her and she is pressed to the wall. Scully gasps and Mulder wants to be the air losing itself inside her like he is beginning to, like she might let him if they can only make it inside. Her hands are in his jacket, under the edge of his shirt and he’s losing all semblance of control and so he pulls back.

‘Scully - I - just wait here - we have to-’

She nods and lets go, her voice catching on half swallowed kisses,

‘Mulder?’ 

For a moment he fears her question but then Scully tilts her chin and he sees a dancing light caught in her eyes.

‘Run fast.’

He has never run so fast in his life.


	5. First Thing Friday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Friday... just about... and after attempting to drown their sorrows, Mulder and Scully decide to confront the issue. NSFW. Part 1/2 of Friday.

****Three attempts. It takes Mulder three attempts to open his door, three times as long as what was too long already. Endless seconds in which Dana Scully might think better of waiting outside his window for some sort of fairytale ending, and return his life to grey, depressing reality.

When finally he throws the door open he runs across the room to tear the drapes apart. In his haste, Mulder trips himself on the fabric and lands hard against the window with an inelegant thump. At the sound Scully steps into view, concern melting into humour as she watches the generally composed Agent Mulder scrabble to untangle his foot from the cheap drapes with one hand. The other fumbles with the window latch, his face a picture of relief and desperation.

Mulder doesn't care if he looks desperate. He is. He has to know how it feels to be hers, just once, and any thought of playing it cool or maintaining a sense of mystery departed with the cab. He doesn't care if Scully is laughing at him, and she is, because the sound is delicious and its presence means she’s really here. Somehow, after two days of strangeness, they have somehow returned to who they were in the laundry room. When he finally gets the window open he extends a hand to her, some strange gesture of 20th century chivalry, the faux-seriousness of which swells her quiet giggles into pealing laughter that goes straight to his heart. Scully steps into his reach but doesn't take his hand, instead doubling over and clutching her belly as uncontrollable choking hoots echo off into the night. Mulder is tempted just to watch, to revel in her unbridled merriment, when a light flicking on further down the building illuminates the grass and reminds him there are many people sleeping nearby, and that Scully should not be here. 

Ducking through the casement he takes her by the shoulders and hushes her with his mouth, her laughter fizzing against his lips, more intoxicating by far than the beers earlier.

For a few moments it is perfect, Mulder can feel her smiling against him and hums his pleasure into the curve of her, not caring that he is pressed against the hard edge of the window frame or worrying that she is straining up to meet him. Scully’s hands tug his head down almost painfully as the smile melts into something fiercer and her mouth opens for him.

Some vague sanity prevails when they realise simultaneously that nothing satisfying will happen with her still outside and so they separate, fingers weaving tightly as Scully sets one foot on the sill and Mulder drags her up, worrying first about her head, which narrowly misses the top of the window, and then about their balance as her momentum throws her against him and he stumbles back trying to steady himself. A discarded shoe is their undoing and twisting slightly to drop to his knee and save his back, Mulder hits the floor, Scully on top of him in a tangle of limbs and laughter.

‘Didn't - your mother - ever teach you - to pick up - after yourself?!’ Scully manages to pant out, tears streaming down her cheeks now as she tries to extricate herself from him, to regain some semblance of control, but Mulder doesn't let her. This is what normal people do, they laugh and fool about, fall about even, and so as Scully sits up and wipes her eyes, dizzy smile plastered across her perfect face, threatening to move off him, he runs one hand up each hip to rest at her waist.

Her breath hitches and her eyes darken, remembering why they came here, what this closeness and privacy means. She leans forward, lips parting and Mulder almost changes his mind, almost lets her kiss him but at the last moment he scratches his nails in a tickling dance up her ribs and Scully squirms, shrieking her protests even has he shushes her and keeps tickling.

He can’t remember exactly how he ends up kneeling over her, both her wrists caught in one hand and the other poised dramatically as if to dive down and restart the tickle assault she has just begged him to stop. Scully is pouting pitifully, her already full bottom lip is pushed out petulantly though her eyes still sparkle with wickedness, and Mulder is about to bend down and nip it when with a mighty grunt his tiny opponent somehow throws him off balance. A second later Scully is sat triumphantly on his chest, wrists still in his hand and smiling wolfishly down at him.

‘I may be small but I’m wily,’ Scully teases and Mulder believes her, calculating his next move carefully, watching for the tiny relaxation that comes with her exhale and then exploiting it to pull sharply on her hands. She falls forward with an ‘ooof’, their chests now held apart only by their arms and mere inches between their faces. If the light were better Mulder would be able to count her freckles but instead he counts her breaths, feels them speed up as he whispers hoarsely into the simmering silence.

‘You may be wily, Scully, But you forget… I’m _literally_ a Fox.’

Scully chuckles once but as the vibration passes through her to where she still straddles him it doesn’t seem quite so funny and he barely hears her murmur, ‘Oh I _know_ ’ before the space between them is gone.

Now they are alone; nobody is going to walk in, there is nothing to stop them and it’s almost too much. The weight of Scully against him is suffocatingly exquisite and Mulder can feel every inch of her; the tender bite of her nails on the sides of his head amplifies the heat that is her tongue flickering against his. Her breasts are sliding slightly against his chest with each breath and under his grasping hands her hips are rocking rhythmically back against the growing hardness in his jeans. It’s more than he had hoped for in his desperate dreams at the start of the week but now it is not enough, Mulder wants to fill his every sense with Scully and as her lips leave his and purr soft nothings against his ear, a graze of teeth sending a shock from his lobe straight to his groin, he gives up her ass to slide his hands under the cotton of her t-shirt.

Scully’s skin is impossibly soft and as he runs a fingertip up her vertebrae, she arches into him, the motion drawing her mouth away but increasing the area of skin he can reach. Mulder’s fingers climb higher up her spine and he watches her face to learn how his touch is affecting her. The lightest of touches makes her shiver, goosebumps flaring on the flash of skin now exposed on her belly while a firmer grasp seems less effective. Mulder strikes gold when he gently rakes his nails over Scully’s shoulder blades, chasing gravity to pull at her bra strap and she moans, her hips grinding involuntarily and her breath catching. He does it again and she snaps upright, grasping for the hem of his t-shirt underneath her and trying to wrestle it out from between him and the floor.

‘Too many clothes.’ Scully pants and Mulder drags himself up enough to enable her to tug the offending garment free. Her flannel shirt follows and Mulder pauses a second toying with the bottom of her tee, putting off revealing what he’s felt but never seen until a quirk of a smile from Scully gives him permission. The fabric parts company with her curves unwillingly, clinging to the fullness of her breasts, to the soft definition of her biceps. But Mulder is insistent, she has offered him her nakedness and he will take it, drink it in, commit it to memory.

The deep swoop of her waist makes her breasts seem larger than they are and Mulder visually measures them as a perfect handful. Testing his hypothesis over the navy lace trim of her bra he marvels at the neatness of their fit, the reflexive curl of his fingers along the line where fabric surrenders to flesh. He leans in and traces a long diagonal from the deep hollow of her collarbone to that meeting point and is chased across her body by the same blush that has painted her cheeks so often in his presence. Scully’s hand stills in his hair, her body tightening as she awaits his next move, the potential for pleasure hanging heavy in the air between them.

And the time for playing is over.

Sick of the rough husk of carpet at his back, Mulder pulls them both upright, stealing Scully’s breath as he sweeps her off her feet and onto his bed. She hits the mattress flat, arms and legs spread and mouth open in surprise but Mulder is back on her before she has a chance to process. He revisits her lips, reminds her of all the delicious things his tongue can do to hers, the teasing, chasing game that leaves her panting, pulsing for more. Scully can still feel the annoyance of her bra between the sparse hairs that dust Mulder’s chest and her skin and she thinks she should tell him to take it off, to take it all off. She’ll do it as soon as she remembers how to speak, as soon as Mulder moves his mouth far enough away that she can see sense. A pause gives her an opportunity but then there are teeth grazing the soft underside of her jaw and strong fingers making quick work of her fly. The hiss of her zipper seems impossibly loud, an abstract run against the steadily accelerating tempo of her breath. And then the teeth move south, following close on the heels of his talented tongue dips tantalisingly under the fabric of her bra but never quite reaches its full potential.

Mulder’s downward progress continues, detouring to pattern random kisses along the muscular line of her abdomen, the definition there Scully’s favourite souvenir so far gained at the Academy. Every touch, every hint of wetness runs ahead of him, gathering between her legs and on a surge of adrenaline, Scully grabs his head, planning to push him further,to show him exactly where she needs him. She’s mostly successful, winding her fingers into his hair as he runs his nose down the same path her zipper took just a moment before, but when her hips react faster than her brain, the combined push and pull is enough to tip Mulder off balance!

With a muffled groan he pitches forward, his weight pressing her legs to the side with his head caught between. Scully is ready to laugh off one more misadventure, to release Mulder from the denim vise of her thighs when he bites her. Not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to burn through the fabric, hard enough to shoot straight through her and transform the giggle in her throat into something guttural, a strangled moan that surprises her. She hadn’t expected that, and judging by the feral sort of shine in Mulder’s eyes which lock on hers as he untangles himself from her limbs, he hadn’t expected that response.

Scully doesn’t know exactly how to ask him for more. Her previous lovers have never consumed her quite like this, never driven her past the point of reason and she feels like her standard bedroom vocabulary falls short of what is needed to hand him control of her pleasure. Instead she shuts down her brain and acts, reaching behind to unhook her bra, letting the straps fall loose until only her arms at her sides hold it in place. Mulder’s breathing shortens and his eyes are fixed on the wavering seam, waiting for more. He can have more, he can have everything but not without giving something back.

‘Pants. Off.’ Even full sentences seem too much like normality, the oxygen saved in monosyllables now fuels Scully’s overloaded synapses as Mulder efficiently shucks his jeans and boxers in one and stands at the edge of the bed, naked and magnificent. Usually, some part of Scully can’t help but appraise the naked male form from an anatomical perspective, reducing it to parts that she understands far better than the whole complicated package of a Y-chromosomed human. But all intelligent thoughts have been stripped away with her clothes and all she sees is Mulder. The whole beautiful package of him, standing before her, breathing hard and devouring her with his eyes He begs her wordlessly to give up the last of her defences and let him in and Scully doesn’t realise she’s let her bra fall until he kneels before her and tugs it away. The same movement rolls her panties over her hipbone, down her thighs, the cotton barely kissing her ankle bone as they join the rest of their clothes on the floor and then it’s just them, bare skin and bedclothes in the night.

This is so much better than the laundry room, Scully thinks as he backs her up the bed, tan thighs bracketing pale hips and harsh breath heating her collarbone.

This is so much better than the kitchen, Mulder agrees, as she pulls him down, legs wrapping tight around his waist until the wet heat of her against his stomach makes him hiss in anticipation of how she will feel around him. He remembers the noise she made when he bit her, craves it, and sets his teeth against the pale velvet of her breast, wanting to leave a mark and thrilling when she lets him. Small fingers force his head harder against her, sounds that would be innocent if he didn’t know what was causing them pouring from her throat, her body begging him for more.

He gives it to her, one hand dropping to dance between her legs, to follow the roll of her hips between her lips and slip experimentally inside her, her body signalling its readiness with every new sensation. Mulder is torn between tasting her and burying himself inside, between fulfilling the biological urge to join himself to this extraordinary woman and eking out every second of this improbable night. His mind is made up when Scully pulls him up for a kiss, the blue of her eyes tempestuous and needy and flashing dangerously when the movement causes the head of his cock to drag across her pussy and over her clit.

‘Now , Mulder!’ She is commanding, following her words with action; a devastatingly light caress of his penis from root to tip, index finger tracing the vein until he is no longer simply hard but throbbing, his body reaching for her even as he drags himself away in a desperate lunge for his wallet.

Empty.

He tips the contents on the floor. Loose change, drivers license, keys. All there. But no condom. Mulder swears under his breath and again, louder as he turns to Scully. She’s sat up, hair wild red against the pale landscape of her body and the sheets and it almost hurts to think that what only a moment ago seemed so certain, the best thing to happen in his sad recent existence, is about to slip through his fingers.

‘You don’t have…?’ He can’t even bring himself to finish the sentence as he sees her eyes widen with realisation and she shakes her head. Of course this would happen, the day Dana Scully finally looks at him with bedroom eyes it all comes to nothing for want of a prophylactic. Across the room he sees her brain start to kick back in, sees her begin to reconsider her nudity as her breathing slows but knowing this maybe a one time opportunity, Mulder is not ready to give up. There is so much of her he has yet to experience, that he can still make right, and in two steps he is at the bed, dragging her legs to the edge and kneeling between.

Scully tries to protest, tries to excuse him from what previous boyfriends have considered a duty at best, but he hushes her with the enthusiasm of his tongue expertly tracing abstract little patterns across her pussy. His hands are on her thighs, holding her still until she stops trying to stop him and loses herself in the sensation, doubled now by the introduction of his hands, long fingers again inside her, dabbling infuriating rhythms across that sweet spot as he alternates whistling breaths and quick horizontal stripes across her clitoris. It’s every bit as teasing as his earlier tickling but far less funny, Scully’s mind misfiring on all cylinders as she tries to work out which way to move to prolong his touch, how to tell him to keep his mouth there - right there - until she comes undone. But she doesn’t need to. Just as she’s ready to unclench her hands from where they’re fisted in his hair and the sheets he changes tactics and the rolling storm in her belly starts to gather towards an explosion. Delicacy becomes determination, two fingers pushing deep, flexing at the end of each stroke to drag pleasure from the deepest recesses of her belly and his tongue, flat now matches their pace as Scully hurtles towards oblivion.

She tries to tell Mulder what he is doing to her, how good he feels, how good she is going to make him feel when she regains use of her limbs but all that comes out is a a full little hiccup at the end of every breath, the mewling sound echoing all the way through her body. It’s never been like this before, she’s never lost herself so completely to another person. Daniel has been forbidden, exciting but even he pales in comparison to the vivid pleasure that Mulder is marking out on her willing skin. Desperate noises shoot past her nails where they dig into his scalp, over her belly, past her shaking thighs and all the way to her toes before turning and racing dizzily back, hotter and faster than before to a finish line of white hot nothingness. Everything breaks apart, anchored only to Mulder and his mouth which flutters still, suspending her in weightless pleasure. When the blazing stillness burns out, aftershocks rush in waves up her body and short out her brain.

When Mulder drifts back into focus he is leaning over her from behind, smiling as he drops a careless kiss on the corner of her mouth. The room seems darker, it is darker, the lights are off and they are under the blankets, him curled loosely around her in the darkness.

‘Did I go to sleep?’ Scully murmurs, the knowledge that it’s a natural physiological response not really outweighing the awkwardness of passing out midway through their encounter.

‘S’fine.’ Mulder’s voice behind her is soft with sleep, his kiss seeming to be the last act of his day. ‘You have assessments tomorrow... well...today actually. It’s really late. I set an alarm’

Scully’s too sleepy to panic about the lateness of the hour, too comfortable to make the case for leaving and instead scoots back closer into Mulder’s embrace. He obliges, draping an arm over her like a safety blanket. She can’t remember the last time she wanted a man to hold her and she hums contentedly, wriggling to get comfortable and feels his cock stir behind her.

‘Down boy’, Mulder chuckles dozily, and Scully resolves to deal with that debt first thing in the morning. She’ll repay the favour, pass her assessments and then get back to working out what to do about this already complicated scenario that has now taken a turn for the intimate. That irritating voice of reason tells her that she should be a lot more worried about all of those things but she drowns it in the comforting warmth of Mulder, post-orgasmic hormones and the gathering tide of sleep and lets go. Friday is off to a good start.


	6. Friday Night By Headlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things head off campus.

Scully awakes as a single bar of light slips through the messily closed drapes and meets the tan line of Mulder’s arm stretched over her body. His breathing is even, calm and matches her own, even as she begins to wonder why she isn’t feeling panic at the dwindling hours between her and exams. Why isn’t she worried about having to escape his quarters unseen in daylight or the potentially disastrous consequences, personally and professionally, of extending her involvement with Agent Mulder? Casual sex is not a new concept to Scully, and rum-fuelled rebellions at med school had taught her that Catholic guilt was more stubbornly present in her than she’d believed it would, but this morning she feels nothing but contentment. Strange.

She waits for the self-questioning to set in as she slips out of Mulder’s embrace, for the test-day adrenaline as she creeps about his bathroom freshening up and slips on her t-shirt and panties. Scully is pleasantly surprised when her morning-crumpled face is all that looks back from his mirror, there is no sign of the sordid sickliness of bad decisions and gathering regrets. Returning to the bedroom she pauses to admire him, to revel in the lean lines he cuts through the chaos of the bedclothes. He stirs but does not waken and the movement reveals the start of the inviting hollow between hip and groin. Scully’s body responds reflexively; a delicious heat builds in her stomach and all returning rationale is lost. A sideways glance at the alarm clock lends her wilder self the conviction that there is time enough to have her fun and make it out before the campus awakes, and that’s all the convincing that this morning’s version of Scully needs.

Mulder wakens seconds later to a a settling weight on his thighs and small hands working busily at the beginnings of a promising morning erection. Forget sunrise, he thinks, the most beautiful sight at the start of a day is the rose pink quirk of Scully’s mouth, hovering inches from his cock as her lashes brush all thoughts of sleep away and he drowns in the coquettish blue of her eyes. Her fingers at his base are firm and determined and as he reaches his full potential, Mulder opens his mouth to tell her that he can’t think of a better way to wake up.

But then Scully’s lips are around him and all that he can manage is a deep groan, somewhere between a yawn and a hallelujah and all previous mornings are forever wiped from his memory. She’s still holding his gaze, a wicked spark flaring as she matches her swallows to the pump of her fist, to the beat of his heart. She can’t take all of him but the nudge of the back of her throat against the sensitive head of him, the tiny vibrations of her breathing and the deliberate looping flick of her tongue as she catches him in her lips at the end of each stroke, create a maddening cycle of pleasure that draws him to the edge of sanity embarrassingly quickly.

Usually this is the point of panic, the point at which to pull back, to try and preserve some sort of control for the main event but with no end game beyond this, nothing within his control at all, Mulder is free to lose himself in the sensations. He winds his fingers into the russet silk of Scully’s hair, caressing the velvet down of her temples and learning the high angle of her cheekbone with the back of one finger. She purrs in response, eyes drooping dreamily shut as he once again gasps at the sensation, at the shivering ache that her sounds add to the already overwhelming combination of hands and mouth. Mulder feels his orgasm build, feels the start of the boiling pressure in his balls and he pants out a warning in half-syllables, which Scully resolutely ignores. She keeps rising and falling between his thighs with the same sensuous morion, a smug sparkle dancing across her face when Mulder swears once and jerks off the bed, winding his fists into the bedsheets to fight the need to pull her tightly to him until he is spent. His hips are less cooperative, bucking upwards as his climax hits, Scully swallowing hard against each jerking thrust until Mulder calls out her name, over and over again, his sounds loud in the morning hush and joined moments later by the raucous beep of his alarm clock.

It takes Mulder thirty seconds to rediscover his limbs and throw one arm out to silence the alarm. In that time Scully has withdrawn and is now sitting back on his thighs looking rather pleased at reducing him to a satiated, boneless heap beneath her.

‘Good morning!’ She smiles, biting her full bottom lip as if to hold back laughter when Mulder’s only response is a lopsided grin and a clumsy attempt to pull her closer. She resists, wriggling forward only far enough to swoop in and run her fingers once through his hair in an affectionate gesture that steals his breath all over again. Mulder has spent the last decade or so of his life convinced that the universe has it in for him somehow, blow after blow keeping him searching for impossible truths. Yet here, sat smiling on his legs, is someone he hasn’t had to fight to find, someone who has appeared in his life in an unlikely moment and seems, impossibly, to understand him and still want him. 

He half expected to wake up this morning and find her gone but she isn’t. Scully is still here. Mulder starts to wonder if just maybe she might be willing to stick around a little longer, not here precisely, but in his life in the more general sense. If maybe she will keep listening to him, keep challenging him. He didn’t mean to let her in but somehow Scully is through the gates and isn’t running hard for cover and for that he wants to invite her further. Mulder wants to trust her.

It goes against everything he believes but somehow he doesn’t care; there is something about Scully that has caused a fundamental shift at the core of his being. Perhaps that should scare him but it doesn’t. He likes this change. It feels lighter, hopeful somehow and so, breaking the habit of a decade of self-isolation, Mulder begins to work out how he might convince Scully to stay.

‘Come to the Vineyard with me Scully?’ Mulder’s heart reacts faster than his brain which is still battling to regulate his serotonin levels. Scully looks confused.

‘Mulder, it’s 6:30 am, I have assessments from 10, one of which you are supposed to administer, and right now I don’t even know how I’m going to make it out of your room with my dignity. I suppose running away _is_ an option but-’

Mulder cuts her off.

‘Not now. Tonight. My family has a place on the ocean. I was going anyway but I want you to come. I want to… finish this properly… I want you all to myself.’ 

Mulder’s voice is still sleep-scratchy but his sincerity is real. His imagined weekend of melancholic strolling has given way to a warmer, softer fantasy; wool blankets, driftwood fires and Scully’s small hand clasped in his along the pebbled beach.

As he returns from his daydream he realises she’s watching him, searching for any hint that he is not serious, studying him intensely. He meets her gaze, holds it steady and tries to explain with one look that the trip comes with no strings, no expectations. Mulder just wants to get away from this place, from the FBI and everything that’s got in the way this week and to take her with him. He reaches for Scully’s hands and this time she lets him take them, staring at his thumbs running small circles across the backs while her mind works.

‘I was supposed to see my mother…’ This should be excuse enough to refuse but Scully pushes past it. ‘But I’m not really ready to see my family yet.’

Mulder nods, feeling that more is coming.

‘And it’s Carla’s birthday. So I swore that if I cancelled on mom I’d go out with her…’

Mulder holds his breath. Hoping.

‘I…’ Scully hesitates, her voice dropping low in her chest before she brings her eyes up to his, open and trusting. ‘Mulder… I want to come with you. I know it’s crazy and I shouldn’t, but I do. I just need to know that this stays between us. That if I somehow make it out of this room undetected, that whatever this weekend is…or isn’t… it’s not going to affect my place here at the FBI. I gave up too much, risked too much, to have this thing between us… whatever it is… get in the way.’

Mulder nods, understanding her hesitation.

‘I promise you that whatever your answer this morning, whatever this weekend becomes, I would never allow it to interfere with your career. From what I’ve heard, you’re pretty much top of the class and that isn’t going to change because of me. I don’t gossip. I barely even talk to anyone other than my AD, and this weekend begins and ends on your terms… if you’ll just come with me.’

Scully nods, lips pursed in thought and Mulder feels his heartbeat race. Is she saying yes? He asks her again with his eyes but she is distracted.

‘Scully?’ he asks, when the silence seems to have lasted forever…

She returns to him with a, ‘Huh?’ and Mulder asks his question again. Out loud this time

‘You said yes… Did you mean you’ll come?’ And when the sparkle in her eyes gives him his answer before her words Mulder feels a giddy racing in his chest that manifests on his face as the goofiest smile in history.

‘Get me out of this room undetected, Agent Mulder, and I’m yours for the weekend,’ Scully’s smile matches his own and in a fit of childlike delight Mulder starts to chuckle, his movements jostling Scully who protests that he’s not taking her escape seriously though she can’t wipe the grin off her face. Mulder doesn’t want her half-hearted complaints, he wants her laughter and so he snatches up the pillow from behind him and gently smacks her with it, right in the face and she squeals and lunges for it. Laughter bubbles up in the wake of her indignance as he tosses the offending it out of her reach. Scully throws her weight forwards, reaching for the other pillow, trying to bite back her amusement to repay Mulder’s prank, but instead finds herself instead landing in his embrace as he takes advantage of her closeness to wrap her in a bear hug.

The solid wall of his chest thrums against her through her t-shirt and Scully forgets she is acting mad and melts into him, feeling his heartbeat against her and sliding her own arms around him to complete the knot of their bodies. Mulder smells like the night before, like sex and sweat and beer and she shouldn’t find it attractive but she does, not resisting when he coaxes her up for a kiss, a gentle reminder of what has passed and what’s to come before he rolls them up and regretfully lets her go.

‘I have concocted a masterful plan to get you out of here. I need to pee, you get dressed and I’ll explain afterwards.’

Mulder returns from the bathroom with boxers on and mint on his breath to find a fully dressed Scully ready to go. Retrieving a hoodie from his wardrobe he puts it over her rumpled clothes and zips it to the top before pulling the hood up over her distinctive hair. The soft grey fabric swamps her and Mulder can’t help kissing her once more, deeper than they really have time for, before he explains his plan and leaves the room.

As she waits by the door, Scully inhales the Mulder-smell of the hoodie, wondering at the recklessness of her agreeing to go away with him. It felt so natural to say yes, bizarre when the reality is that she’s turning away from both friends and family to pursue this strange relationship. The loud bark of the fire alarm shatters her thoughts and waiting for the scuffle of many feet to begin passing, Scully slips out anonymously, just one more figure in a half-awake morning crowd shuffling to the muster point.

* * *

 

Scully exits the Quantico campus with two bags and no backwards glance at exactly 4:30 pm, starting the 15 minute walk to the nearby bus stop where she agreed to meet Mulder. The day passed surprisingly normally, Carla stumbling up to the roll call at the drill from a direction nowhere near their dorm, removing any need for an excuse for her absence the night before. Back at the room, she’d made her excuses for the weekend, telling her roommate she couldn’t cancel on her mom, before ducking out and calling Maggie to say she couldn’t get away. Scully feels like she should have felt more guilty for the lie, but she couldn’t summon up that emotion. No. All she felt was a low thrum of excitement as she whizzed through the pathology assessment, a rush of anticipation and memory as she passed the next round of firearms training with 97%, and a giddy leap every time she glanced up during the profiling exercise and caught Mulder’s sideways smile. There is no getting around it, after a turbulent week of false starts and miscommunications, she, Dana Scully, is completely and totally under Fox Mulder’s spell. So complete is her thrall that she hasn’t questioned the logic of making a 9 hour drive to the Vineyard when there are totally serviceable beaches nearby. As much as she wants simply to escape, she also wants to go to his home, to try and glean from the place and from who he is there, the reasons why he has been able to impact her so profoundly in so short a time.

Scully finds herself smiling as she walks, despite the weight of her bags. She hasn’t been totally irresponsible, a spare pare of jeans, pajamas, toiletries and a few extra sweaters fill one end of one bag and the rest of the space is loaded with next week’s reading. If she can get some of it done in the car then there is bound to be space around the edges for the rest. She’ll make sure of it.

Scully’s almost at the bus stop when she hears the unmistakable sound of a car slowing behind her. A battered Taurus grinds to a halt on the shoulder and Mulder unfolds himself from the driver’s side as Scully opens the rear door and tosses her stuff on top of a layer of files, trash and what looks like gym gear. Wrinkling her nose, Scully straightens to get in the front and finds Mulder in her personal space, the door opened for her and a dopey smile on his face as he dips to kiss her nose.

‘Careful the wind doesn’t change so you get stuck like that Scully,’ he jokes as he returns to his seat, ‘I’d hate to return you with wrinkles in your pretty nose!’

‘Remind me why I agreed to come with you again?’ Scully scoffs at him as she climbs in, but softens when she realises that he’s cleaned for her. The space where she now sits is conspicuously lacking in the detritus that litters the rest of the vehicle and she abandons any pretence of annoyance when Mulder offers her a bag of M&Ms and peels back onto the road. A companionable silence stretches out as she tucks in and they merge onto the I-95.

* * *

 

Three hours of miraculously clear roads delivers them to a rest-stop on the outskirts of Philadelphia. They decide not to stop and eat at the grimy little diner, Scully darting in to collect food to go and use the restrooms, while Mulder fills up and picks up iced tea and snack food from the gas station. They reunite with Scully in the driver’s seat and a box of fries between them, sparring over the correct way to eat them; Mulder goes by the handful, biting them in half and insisting that Scully’s method, the posting of individual fries in one after another and folding the long ones, is both messier and slower. They agree to disagree when the arrival of Fleetwood Mac’s _Everywhere_ on the radio sets them both singing, Mulder in a wavering falsetto that makes Scully laugh so hard she chokes and almost swerves off the road.

When she eventually recovers, Mulder promises not to sing anymore and lasts an entire three songs before his vigorous miming to _Dangerzone_ makes it clear that while her may condescend the mainstream career-wise he is not immune to the same _Top Gun_ fantasies as many of Scully’s classmates. In the interests of keeping them on the road, the radio is turned off and the conversation turns to childhood road trips, the snacks that no longer exist and those little pieces of nostalgia that only rolling wheels and mile marker signs can evoke.

Scully doesn’t remember she is meant to be studying until it is already dark, and as appealing as having Mulder read to her is, the darkness has changed the mood and she doesn’t want to disrupt the new honesty that is springing up in the blackness. In the long breaths between street-lit suburbs Mulder tells her of his missing sister, of everything that was lost along with her: his childhood, his parents ability to be close to him and any sense of security. As the pieces slot into place Scully starts to understand just some of the reasons he would choose as he has chosen, why he might both push her away and chase after her. She’s still not sure that this fling will not end in disaster, but now it’s gone this far it seems more important for her to know these things, to understand them, and him, as far as she can. Then she will be as prepared as possible to move on. However it now ends, Scully has been too far gone to just walk away from the moment she took Mulder’s hand and followed him to his room in the dark.

He offers her his history and so she gives him her present. Compared to his childhood, the Scully family story seems rather idyllic. Perhaps some of the moves had been tough but no real wounds had opened up until recently. Missy’s unconventional ways might have been embarrassing at church picnics and Charlie’s move away had been tough, but it wasn’t until dutiful Dana had refused Ahab’s advice, chasing after a career that “wasted her talents”, took her far from home and broke her father’s heart that the cracks really began to show. Scully still couldn’t understand how what had seemed to her an opportunity, a way to more closely emulate the way her father and role model had served his country, could be so very controversial. And once she had made her mind up, no amount of Ahab’s disappointment, Maggie’s tears, or Bill’s overbearing fear-mongering about her safety and prospects could sway her.

Which is probably how she ended up here. Driving in the dark with the only person who has looked past the academic facade and seen the curious mind, who likes both her scepticism and and her silliness. Since arriving at Quantico it seems that everyone has wanted her to be one thing or another; a brain or a body, a good time girl or a study buddy, a teacher’s pet or a troublemaker. Everyone until Mulder. He seems to see her as everything she is, possibly as more even than she sees herself, pushing her past her limits and asking the same in return. It is that, as much as his good looks, easy charm and brilliant mind, that draws her ever closer even as the stakes rise.

The clock on the dash ticks towards midnight as the miles wear away the questions each of them have wanted to ask but not found the words or time to verbalise. Now there is nothing but time. Nothing but them and the stories and secrets they have to tell, walls melting away as easily as state lines in the darkness. It’s a new kind of intimacy, far more dangerous than sex and yet Scully is not scared.

Mulder takes her hand as they pass New Haven and doesn’t let go.


	7. Sunrise Saturday

 

‘Scully... Wake up.’ Mulder’s voice is as soft as his fingertips skittering down her cheek and she awakes in the diffused-blue green glow of a 24-hour-store neon sign.

‘This is the last place we can stock up before we get to the Vineyard,’ Mulder explains. ‘I didn’t wanna wake you but I don’t know what you eat. Just tell me what you need, supplies wise, and go back to sleep.’

Part of her is agreeing with him, the worn fabric of the seatback seeming as good a pillow as any after the long day, night… whatever it is now, driving. But the part of her that packed her bag this afternoon without thinking, that has followed him hundreds of miles for no real reaon, is wide awake, thrilling at the salty night air that creeps through his cracked open door. Rolling the stiffness out of her neck she unhooks her belt and says,

‘Let’s go.’

They wander across the parking lot hand in hand, as if this is the most normal thing in the world. It feels like the most normal thing in the world. One tall shadow and one small, interlinked and stretching out in the unnatural light. It should be surreal, virtual strangers performing the most mundane of tasks, but it’s not. The last time a man tried to domesticate Scully she’d run so hard, so far, that when she’d stopped for breath she’d found herself in an entirely different career, another life to where she started. She was never been able to visualise the small things with any of her boyfriends but somehow the sight of Mulder wrestling a basket out of the stack and smiling a small secret smile her doesn’t scare her. They navigate the aisles together in easy silence, tossing in bread, fruit and cheese, lulled into a sleepy half reality by piped music and the rattle of the air conditioning.

It’s like a dream almost, an alternate reality set in a neon twilight where this is their life together; slow sweeps down abandoned aisles, punctuated by sideways looks and fingers catching and releasing as they turn each corner. Mulder goes to skip the pharmacy aisle but Scully heads down and he follows, he would follow her to the ends of the earth. She stops midway, snatches something down from the shelf and tosses it in the basket without a backwards glance.

Condoms.

Mulder can’t believe he had forgotten, can’t believe the depth of the blush that is rushing up the back of Scully’s rapidly retreating neck. She’s scrunched her hair into a messy bundle and as she rounds the corner ten steps ahead of him the delicate skin of her neck burns as vividly as her hair. Mulder smiles at the conflict that is Dana Scully: strict logic and reckless leaps, quiet confidence and sudden shyness. He catches up to her with long paces, nudging her off stride until she runs out of space and stops in front of one of the freezer cabinets, staring determinedly at pizzas and fries. Then he puts down the basket and wordlessly boxes her in, one hand on either side of her hips, close but not touching, and waits for her to look at him.

When she does, Mulder finds softness and strength battling for control, colour still high in her cheeks as he presses his lips to her forehead, her nose and finally her lips. It’s reassuring at first, just a sweet confirmation that they both still want the same thing, but somehow it accelerates, consumes, and it takes an unsubtle cough from the cashier to separate them, breathing heavily enough to have started to fog up the freezer door.

Unwrapping her arms from Mulder’s waist, Scully smiles, her lips kiss-plump and eyes bright.

‘How far is it to your place?’

‘Too far!’’Mulder groans and she bites her lip before sliding out and retrieving their basket.

‘Then we’d better get back in the car.’

* * *

 

The shopping is tossed carelessly on the backseat in the rush to start driving again and as they roll back onto the road the air in the car feels somehow different. Before it had been companionable, hundreds of soft, quiet and comfortable miles stretching towards a half-considered finishing line. Now though, the destination is certain, desperately desired and the air is thick, hot and close. They are close. Close enough to smell, to sense, but not close enough to touch.

Scully asks him how far it is again and he tells her 50 minutes. She starts counting down heartbeats, the gentle clench and release of her hands in her lap as her memory dances through their last nights together. The shopping makes a sliding sound as it slips from one side of the car to the other with each turn that Mulder takes slightly too fast, his hands are restless on the wheel and Scully tries to distract herself from imagining where else they might find themselves playing. She tries to imagine what the Mulder family house will look like; New England shingles and sea facing windows, wood and stone maybe, the kind of simple, rustic style that only a large sum of money can buy in this area. The homes they are driving past now are a world away from her childhood holidays. The Scullys vacationed at resorts where families crammed into apartments and noise and laughter reigned. There were no manicured lawns or privacy fences. The tidy quiet of Martha’s Vineyard coupled with the few stories Mulder has shared of his childhood makes her sad for him, for the distance that existed not only between his house and the next one over, but between him and those who should have loved him the most, held him the closest. Scully wants to make up for it and so she unhooks her seatbelt and settles herself against the centre console, leaning across to rest her head on Mulder’s shoulder and taking the hand he offers between both of hers.

The clock on the dash flickers past 5am, minutes dripping languidly into the well of silence between them and she wonders if they will get there before sunrise, whether what happens between them when they arrive will belong to the darkness or the light. Mulder’s pulse beats anticipation against her cheek and she decides it doesn’t matter. None of the normal things apply here. Maybe it will be what she is used to, careful, consuming passion between clean sheets in a big bed, or maybe they won't make it past the couch. Whatever it is though, it will be them and somehow that makes the uncertainty exciting, the next act in a mystery that began in a laundry room, in a kitchen, and reappeared just an hour ago in the frozen foods aisle. The sky begins to lighten and Scully’s breathing grows shallow, her position over the console growing uncomfortable but remaining the only way she can keep her nose pressed against Mulder’s shirt and their hands resting on his thigh.

When it comes, the click of the turning light is impossibly loud and the gravel drive impossibly long. They roll to a stop next to a pretty shingled cottage, isolated in a bay, but there is no time to take in the view before Mulder has torn off his seatbelt and twisted to pick up what was left off in the grocery store.

His lips are savory with sunflower seed salt and rough on hers, slipping from her mouth to whisper his intentions across her jaw and under her earlobe. Scully loses her hands in his hair and follows him, tasting his cheek, running her nose across his brow as they try to let loose in the confined space. Frustration wins out, Mulder groaning as his elbow catches the gear stick and as quickly as he was kissing her he is out of the car, tearing the rear doors open to snatch up the shopping and cram the few escaped items back into the carrier bags. Then, by the time Scully has engaged her brain enough to get out, he is at the passenger door, fingers outstretched and eyes brighter than the gathering dawn. They hurry across the lawn and up some wooden steps to a pretty veranda overlooking the ocean. The pounding of the ocean echoes the thrum of blood through Scully’s body. It’s cool, almost cold and yet she is burning hot, skin energised by the contrast of the September wind and Mulder’s touch. The shopping is once again scattered, dropped unceremoniously as Mulder flips the mat looking for a key. He swears when he doesn’t find it, spinning on his heel to pass Scully, trailing one finger along her waist as he begins overturning a series of flowerpots with increasing carelessness.

The first edge of the morning sun peeks over the horizon and for a second Scully forgets her body and stares out across the water. The ocean is a few hundred feet away, kissing a pebbled beach with light tipped waves and she thinks this could be heaven. It’s so quiet and yet so full of life. Paradise shifts when strong arms encircle her from behind and Mulder is there, his words ruffling the hair that the sun is burning brazen in its infancy.

‘I can’t find the key,’ he mutters, regretful, and though Scully knows she should be annoyed, that she should be reminding herself this is why she doesn’t like spontaneity, she feels nothing but heat and potential.

Turning in Mulder’s arms she tugs him closer, feeling him hard at her front and the porch railing firm at her back.

‘It’s okay’, she tells him, pulling up on her tiptoes to nip at his jaw until he understands what she means. His ‘Scully’ is an inhale of surprise and reverence that is rapidly swallowed by kisses, hungry and human and she’s off her feet and balanced on the rail, her thighs locked around his hips for stability. Practicality turns to purpose as this position pulls him tightly between her legs, his approval of her idea pressing the fly of his jeans firmly against her. This time when he moans it’s not frustration but arousal, an animal reaction to the rock of her body against his, the darting fire of her tongue in his mouth and the dig of her nails into his back where she has finally found skin under the cotton of his shirt.

The sun is slowly warming Scully’s back as she tries to tug the garment free and maintain her balance, the clench of her thighs anchoring her but making the man she clings to unsteady. He lets go to help and she teeters, too far back on the railing and as the shirt whisks past his fingertips the heady sensation of falling adds to the adrenaline racing through her veins. But then there is Mulder, safe hands at her back and then lifting her, dropping to her ass as with a clench of his abs that she feels through her pants he carries her across the veranda.

The bench seat swings as Mulder drops into it, pulling her high in his lap as his hands abandon their post and slide up under her sweater and toss it aside. Goosebumps race the cold air along Scully's arms and down her torso under the flimsy fabric of her tank and she knows from the flash of wolf in Mulder’s eyes that he has felt her nipples harden against his chest. He follows the wind south, nipping once again at the sweet spot behind her ear and trailing scalding kisses, down her neck and into her collarbone. Scully hums in harmony with the world, looping her arms behind his neck and arching, enjoying the rock of the seat as the motion presses her crotch more firmly to Mulder’s and offers him her chest.

He takes it, pushing the straps of her tank and her bra away and tugging until she is half bare to the dawn. Scully has never been this wanton in daylight and she shuts her eyes against it, against anything that will bring reality to this wild, fantastical morning. She doesn’t care if there are neighbours, all she cares about is the wet heat of Mulder’s mouth on her body, the rasping heat of his tongue on her breast, painting her nipples with his tongue and then letting the wind have its way with her, sensitising her flesh in a way she never knew was possible. And then he bites her and her eyes snap open, a startled yelp cutting the air as he soothes the mark he has just left with his tongue. Scully has never appreciated hickeys, they always seemed so very high school but there’s something primal in the red crescent that Mulder has just left on the inside of her breast, and when he repeats his actions on the other she squirms and pulls his head to her, rolling her hips harder against his cock. She needs more.

Mulder feels it too, and reluctantly abandons her breasts, hands busy with the button of her jeans, fighting to find space between his erection and her movements to get the fly down. He succeeds after a moment, hissing as Scully rewards him with a determined thrust of her hips and a long sweep of her fingernails over his shoulders and down to where the scattered hair on his torso thickens and drops beneath his waistband. His cock jumps against the tight prison of his pants and Scully grins, biting her lip at the strength of his need for her. She lingers at the button, teasing, enjoying the power she has over Mulder, the same power he had seconds ago with his lips on her body but before she can use it, before she can make him beg for her touch he has shoved his hand into her panties and all scheming is over.

The suddenness of his movement sends the seat rocking harder and amplifies her natural movements, Mulder’s fingers slickening between her legs as he presses against the restriction of her remaining clothes. The tip of his middle finger flirts with her clitoris but the angle is all wrong and Scully growls, fighting once more with Mulder’s fly even as he pushes her off to stand before him and starts to slide her jeans and panties over her ass. His hand is back between her legs before they even hit her knees, tracing a relentless line through her wetness before burying one finger as deep as it will reach. Scully’s knees shake, and she presses forward, asking for more as she snatches at Mulder’s pants only to be thwarted by the swing moving away from her. The return is more satisfying, their momentum pressing them together and Mulder’s face once again within reach of her body. But it's all too unsteady, all too uncertain and Scully knows what she wants and it’s thick and hot and straining against her hand.

She steps out of reach and out of her jeans, hair whipping in a gust of wind as the sun settles on her pale curves. Mulder sits frozen and Scully raises an eyebrow, there’s a strange innocence to how he’s absorbing her nakedness, a concentration so serious it’s almost childlike. She can’t help but smile and at that Mulder’s jaw clenches and the starving man is back.

‘Do you have any idea how good you look,’ he chokes out and when she bites her lip his, ‘Fuck - Scully’, sends a wash of arousal through her that has her starting to search through their supplies for the condoms.

‘"Fucking” _was_ the general idea. And Mulder? If you’re still wearing those pants when - there they are - I get back there then this whole thing is off.’

He isn’t, they’re somewhere round his knees, but it’s not relevant anymore as Scully climbs back into his lap and runs a dainty finger over the tip of his cock.

‘Good morning,’ she whispers against Mulder’s lips and then with a whisper of foil, smooth strokes and a sinking sigh he is finally inside her.

For the first few moments the only sound is the wind in the trees and the creak of the swing as it copies their motion, shallow breaths and shallow thrusts as they learn how they fit together, when to pause and when to push. But then Mulder’s fingers are clutching her ass and driving her closer and Scully’s nipples are rushing past the roughness of his chest hair on every downward thrust. The little noises in his throat turn into full out grunts as he digs his feet into the floor to steady the swing and bucks against it. It’s an infuriating balance of fullness and absence, the unsteady footing sometimes conspiring to pull him deeper, the angle catching her clit and the spot inside that makes her dig her nails into the back of the bench, or Mulder’s back, whichever is closer. But as the rhythm increases their control fails and they find themselves swinging wildly from the chains, climax just out of reach.

Scully’s about to demand a relocation when Mulder beats her to it, sliding off the seat and to his knees and laying her against the sanded planks. The wood is cool and something is jabbing into her back but she forgets all that when Mulder hooks his elbows under her knees and presses forward. He’s deeper like this, she can feel every inch stretching her, the silken hardness off him demanding her pleasure. 

From this angle,Scully can see the beaded sweat on Mulder’s brow as he sets a faster pace, the sea taking on the purpled blue of the sunrise behind him and the tide of pleasure turning back and rushing for the shore. She runs one hand over his chest, pinching his nipples and the other between her legs, touching herself without hesitation, knowing from the grit of his teeth that he is fighting to hold out for her. Faster now, and the pounding of her pulse drowns out the water, the weight of Mulder blocks out the sun and there is only the aching slip of him inside her, the frenzied flicker of her fingers and the manic light in his eyes as he pushes once, twice and then his eyes roll and his rhythm turns messy, pulsing inside her as he comes. She is so close, so so close but as Mulder withdraws, rolling his weight to one side and collapsing the opportunity begins to shrink. Then his fingers are where his cock was, reaching for the melting spot within as his teeth scrape over shoulder and the fire in her belly rekindles. A messy minute, lips wherever they can reach and his fingers and hers duelling to find the right balance until she’s panting and rocking into his hand, fluttering swoops of ecstasy firing off her clenched eyelids as she retreats from her climax and refocuses on the world.

It’s daylight. She’s stretched naked and exhausted with Mulder beside her on his family’s summer house porch. It’s growing warmer, September getting ready to roll out an indian summer day, and as the sweat cools and her heart slows there’s a temptation  just to roll into the man beside her and go to sleep. Scully rolls her head towards him and finds him watching her, finds his fingers, still sticky with her, reaching for hers.

‘You’ll get sunburn’ he tells her, rolling in to press a small kiss to the tip of her nose and she blushes and reaches beneath her to remove whatever the object she’s been lying on from the floor. It’s a key,

‘There it is’, Mulder exclaims, running a lazy hand up her arm to retrieve it and offering a sheepish smile. Scully only rolls her eyes, it’s too late to regret what just happened and truth be told, she’s never seen the sun come up in quite so enjoyable way. She is, however, happy that they now have access to a bathroom and hopefully a bed, she needs a shower and some sleep.

Scully potters round the porch collecting scattered clothing as Mulder finally gets the door open, holding it open with a gesture that would be gentlemanly if it weren’t for the fact that he’s stark naked and as she passes through into the cool interior he remarks off-handedly,

‘You know Scully - that swing’s my mother’s favourite place to sit...’

Scully swallows a snort.

‘Then we should probably wipe it down,’ she deadpans. 

Mulder chuckles softly and vanishes into a closet returning with towels before pointing her to a bathroom and starting to unpack the perishables into the refrigerator. Scully takes one last look at him, lean and leaning against the counter as if this were the most normal set up for a weekend. Maybe it is for him. Maybe it could be for her. As Scully shuts the door and starts the shower she knows one thing for sure, Fox Mulder as a lover is no more expected or conventional than he is as a friend, lecturer of FBI Agent, Whatever this weekend becomes, she is increasingly sure it was the right thing to do.


	8. Words for a Weekend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saturday Afternoon

Scully wakes confused, but comfortable, in a room with white curtains, afternoon sun and a sea-scented breeze. She can hear the nearby ocean roaring, and while her current prone position hides it from her gaze, she’s not complaining about the view.

 ****Through an open french window, she can see Mulder, bare to the waist, with his skinny ankles poking out from plaid flannel pants that look childhood soft and are at least four inches too short. He’s looking seawards, his shoulders sloping and relaxed and the sun is catching gold flecks in his hair that glimmer like his eyes did when he pulled her and the blanket close at 6am and kissed her to sleep. Scully stretches extravagantly in the crisp sheets and, slipping on his shirt, pads over. She is pleased when he doesn’t hear her, too lost in his own private world to expect her arrival until announces it, running her hands over the warm relief of his abdomen and stepping in to press her lips to his shoulder blade. Wordlessly he invites her into his happy place, spinning her in front of him to look out over the water, and she melts into the space between his body and his arms, fitting and filling a vacuum that could have been created to her exact measurements. For a few moments there is silence, stillness in the face of the endless, immense battle between land and sea ahead of them, and neither of them thinks about how easily their battle ended, how giving into one another feels somehow like a victory rather than a concession.

Even on the edge of paradise though, reality has a habit of creeping in, and as Mulder’s fingers hover possessively in the grooves of her ribs, Scully can’t help but wonder what this means beyond the present. Downstairs in a still unopened bag, the weighty tomes of her future lie unread, the unpaid balance of the last gamble she took. Her training at the FBI is barely underway and yet here she is, leveraging a precious free weekend against another unknown, investing in another instinctive choice.

She’s not aware of her shoulders stiffening, or the way she is chewing her lip until Mulder softly says.

‘Don’t.’

Scully turns in towards him, her eyebrow already forming the question she hasn’t yet worked out how to verbalise and he doesn’t hesitate to caress her cheek, to reconnect them while he begs her,

‘Don’t think yet. Not today. You’re a brilliant scientist and I’m a conspiracy obsessed psychologist. We can both reason our way out of anything… but I don’t want to. Not yet. Be unreasonable with me. Just until tomorrow.’

And though she wants to tell him that what worries her is that she will want more than just “until tomorrow”, unreasonable sounds like freedom, and so instead of thinking she starts undoing the buttons on the shirt that’s the only thing between him and her skin.

He follows her logic, replacing cotton and flannel with sunlight and hands and rocks into her, mimicking the seas unfailing rhythm. Where the first time was impulsive and reckless, this is deliberate and somehow the more devastating for it. In his family’s home, in a bed where Mulder has spent many unhappy nights, they turn smooth sheets into a tempest, struggle for breath and are finally pulled under, hand in hand, by the same tide which has pulled them together all week, even as they fought to stay apart.

* * *

They make it out of bed and into clothes just as the sun starts to flirt with the coastline, sweaters slung loosely over their shoulders for the moment when the lengthening shadows turn cold, and though the day is nearing its end, the possibilities seem infinite. Mulder can’t remember ever walking this coast path in so serene a mindset. Before Samantha, he used to take it at a run, rushing for the beach or the cafe or wherever was next in life’s great adventure; after she was gone he would hang back, as if by staying far enough behind his parents he might somehow resist of the undertow of their grief. Now though, time flows at it’s proper pace, Scully’s steps slightly shorter than his but somehow keeping up as he shows her the landmarks of his childhood, her hand in his warding off ghosts and bringing happy moments into the foreground.

He had planned to take her to _The Harbormasters_ , the misleadingly simple, incredibly expensive seafood place his parents and their friends had vanished off to on special occasions, but twilight finds them stretched out on the end of the pier with a fresh lobster, fries and salad, purchased at a whim from the kitchen of the local fish-market. Mulder sweet talks the establishment’s wind-burned matriarch into selling him a room temperature bottle of wine from her own cellar and loaning them some cutlery, slinging his arms giddily around Scully’s waist to punctuate a improvised romantic backstory. His mostly-plagiarised story of a spontaneous engagement trip to a childhood escape is ridiculous, but delivered with such effusive tenderness that Scully’s blush is real and his heart races in response.

They eat, hip to hip in perfect harmony, him scarfing the majority of the fries and her eating round the walnuts in the salad. Her legs stretch only three quarters down his but when Scully reaches up to dab dressing from Mulder’s lip, his chasing kiss fits perfectly against her smile.

When darkness threatens they don’t move, choosing instead to fill it with stories that they wouldn’t normally tell, secrets that no longer seem so shadowy.

‘I think I’ve always chosen men my family disapprove of as a kind of experiment.’ Scully says, leaning into his chest and rolling the tension out of her shoulders. ‘It’s strange really, that science never shook my faith in God, the uneasy bedfellows of design theory and evolution never gave me much trouble. But the battle between of sin and piety? Choosing between abstinence and having to ask forgiveness for things that seemed so natural? The fact that _I knew_ my parents knew I was having sex, cohabiting even, that I knew they didn’t approve but weren’t saying anything… reconciling their insistence that I be honest with their refusal to acknowledge inconvenient facts… to either condemn me for snubbing their convictions or accept and embrace my choices… it was the first time a topic was truly off limits. The first lie we both perpetuated. And it shook me, my faith, harder than I expected.’

She feels rather than sees Mulder nod in the star-pricked space above her head.

‘That kind of makes sense,’ he tells her. ‘Because you didn’t create the universe or invent the laws of science, you just abide by them. But you have created your own life, made your own choices and translated what your parents taught you into something you can live by. There are many, many wise and influential people who believe in and have an understanding of both God and science. There’s a precedent you can accept. But there are far fewer people who know and understand you so well. They’re your parents, and your testing of their theories came back inconclusive. That would make you question your hypotheses. Question yourself.’

Scully considers for a moment. And he continues, absently tracing the constellations that have begun to come into focus on her arm.

‘You shouldn’t though. The real conclusion is consistent. They may not always understand your choices but they love you.’

And there’s such wistfulness in Mulder’s voice that Scully breaks the moment and twists into him, searching out his eyes in the silhouette he has become, clambering over his stretched out limbs to pull herself as close to him as she can be, as if by wrapping him in her acceptance she can push away his melancholy.

‘Mulder - I-’

It’s okay,’ he forgives the top of her head without hesitation. ‘You don’t have to apologise to me for having a family who love you even when they have no idea how to show it. Or explain away your frustrations. We are all the product of our circumstances, we all have things that keep us awake at night and relativity and comparison to the miseries of others doesn’t make those fears any less terrifying in the dark.’

Scully runs her nose along the underside of his jaw and rests her cheek on the pulse of blood in his neck. His heart is beating steadily, though the muscles are tense; this is an old wound, one that stays shut and sutured not because it is healed but because Mulder knows how to talk around the edges and not probe the deepest parts where the hurt is still raw. It is stable but will not heal, not without help. She doesn’t mean to ask it, to try and push past his guard but she does, hands lost deep in the wool of his sweater and legs wrapped about his hips.

‘What keeps you awake at night Mulder?’ 

He doesn’t answer for a long time and when he does his words are so quiet they barely ruffle the baby hairs where his lips are pressed to her temple.

‘I think about how everyone who has ever told me they loved me has left me behind.’

Scully wants to tell him she thinks that she could love him far too easily. She wants to tell him that she doesn’t want to let go, not now and maybe not ever. But even as instinct brings the sound to her lips, fear and rationalism makes her bite them back. It’s far too soon for such a dangerous confession, and so instead of speaking she kisses him, hard enough to steal away his words and his doubt, so desperately that their teeth knock together and his fingers are so needy in her hair that it tugs almost painfully at the roots. They stay there for a long moment, burning the doubts from each other’s lips and replacing them with a need that can be satiated, and then they begin the long walk home. Their way is lit only by the watery beams of the two old torches Mulder dug out cross-crossing and lapping at the ground before them, tipsily spilling into each other to flare more brightly before separating  and fading back to pale.

When they reach the house Scully expects to continue what they started on the pier, and she turns to Mulder expecting heat, her fingers already toying with the heavy hem of her sweater. What she finds is him caught in the doorway, wavering between the dark outside and the soft light diffusing from the lamp they left lit. His eyes are fixed on her like a lost child who think they have found their way home but is waiting to be welcomed. He is waiting to be sure.

She crosses to him and leads him inside, closes and locks the door and together they go upstairs. Crawling fully clothed on to the bed, Mulder settles his head on her breast, wrapping his arms about her and burying his face in the sea-scented knit of her body. The soft quilt of silence is broken only by the sea, roaring its indifference to all that has been given and taken away in this house, but just as she’s slipping into sleep, Scully thinks she hears Mulder whisper,

‘It’s good to be home.’  


	9. So Long Sunday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It ends where it begins...

Reality arrives with a sudden shift in the sheets and then the most awful noise Scully has ever heard in the dead of night. Somewhere between a scream and the word “NO”, Mulder is thrashing beside, her, sweat-slicked and just shouting over and over again as his eyes flicker desperately behind their screwed shut lids. Everything she knows about sleepwalkers and nightmares flies out of her head, she can’t not wake him, not when his fingers are twisted cruelly in the sheets as if he’s grasping for something or someone who is just beyond his reach. Trying to stay out of range, in case he startles, Scully reaches over and starts to smooth Mulder’s hair rhythmically back from the stress lines gathered on his forehead, he jerks a little and so she starts speaking, just his name and that he’s safe and she’s there, in the soft, bedside voice she learned on her pediatrics rotation.

‘Come back, Mulder, it’s okay. Just wake up. Shhh. I’ve got you’

And slowly, painfully slowly, her kindness wears the edges from his anguish, his cries become whimpers, and then subside, hands loosening in she sheets as his eyes, dark with terror flutter open.

‘Scully?’ he manages, and then she is crushed to his chest, closer than close and he’s sobbing into her hair. She holds him just as tightly, holding him together, Mulder’s strength and size so diminished by his terror that Scully almost believes despite her petiteness she could shield him, wrap him completely in her strength and so fight off his demons before they can reach him.

When his grip and breathing have relaxed enough to let moonlight and air between them Scully asks,

‘What did you dream?’ half expecting that he won’t answer. Mulder rolls away onto his back, waits a breath and then reaches back for her hand, unable to meet her eyes but needing her touch.

‘I’m walking down a long corridor with a group of other men. We’re all in suits, we work together I think, and as we walk we pass doors on either side. The doors stretch endlessly away, in both directions and at each door someone stops, opens a little hatch and looks through. Then they make a note, close the hatch and move on. It all seems very normal at first. Like it’s just another day on the job. But then it’s my turn to look in and when I do, something shifts.’

He takes a deep breath and his grip on her hand tightens a little. Scully turns in so she can hold on more tightly, both her arms wrapped around one of his, and when he doesn’t shrug her off she rests her forehead on his shoulders and waits for him to continue.

‘Through the hatch there is a room, a gurney, and strapped to it is a man. He feels familiar but I can’t place him. There are machines that I know mean he is alive, but he looks dead. There are doctors in biosuits, running tests, his chest is open and there are wires coming out, plugged into their machines and then the man screams. He screams and looks right at me and I realise he is my college roommate and his eyes are asking me why even as the doctors hold him down and sedate him. One of them winks at me and says “you told us he was a livewire”, and I realise that his being there is my fault.

When I step back from the hatch one of the men in suits slaps me on the back, like it’s all a big joke, and waits for me to move on. But I don’t. Instead I go back to the last door and open the hatch. It’s my old FBI partner. And the one before that is my nanny.

I start running, tearing open every hatch and as I go I realise everyone I have ever known is in these rooms, cut open, being destroyed and that I have done it to them. My high school girlfriend, my parents… Samantha.

Samantha is in the last room. And she is still a child. Still wearing the same clothes as the last night I saw her. She doesn’t look at me and when I try to open the door, to reach her, the men in suits pull me back, start to drag me away and I’m screaming, crying out for her…

That’s usually when I wake up.’

Scully searches for something to say, for some reassurance for the man who has lost so many loved ones and carries so much guilt, but Mulder is not finished.

‘Tonight you were there too.’

And she stills, her soothing fingers losing their way in the coarse hairs of his forearms. Mulder’s voice is hoarse and afraid, whether of the dream or her reaction she isn’t sure.

‘You were awake. You were fighting them, and when you saw me look in, you fought to get to me, you didn’t blame me or fear me, you were trying to tell me something but I couldn’t get to you and they took you away.’ Mulder turns to her, half sitting so the moonlight pools on the plains of his face and grasps her cheek, not roughly but firmly enough to force her to look at him, and there’s heartbreak and hope in his voice when he tells her,

‘You didn’t want to leave me Scully, but I couldn’t stop it happening,’ and then he crushes her lips to his.

Scully doesn’t think she could deny him this, even if she wanted to. And she doesn’t. The intensity of their attraction has always been shocking but in the raw aftermath of Mulder’s confession it borders on brutal. She opens herself to it, to the tide of need that pours of the man who is tearing at the clothes leftover from their day of simple happiness, fumbling the condom, tugging at her pillow-wild hair to urge her closer to him.

So she comes closer. She throws away her inhibitions with his boxers and drags his hands out of her hair and onto her body. She lets Mulder write his fears onto her skin with his fingers, urges him down to wash them away with his mouth. She shouts her pleasure into the silence, determined to replace his memories of her screaming in his nightmare with sounds of pleasure, sounds of them together, her cursing him not in anger but for the exquisite torture that is his teeth marking her breast, his fingers deep between her legs and the rasp of his stubble on the petal soft skin of her thighs.

Before, the sex was intimate but lighthearted, the heady consummation of a week of missed opportunities, but this time when he fucks her, and there is no other word for what they are doing, it’s as if he wants to consume her. He doesn’t ask permission when he hooks her ankle over his shoulder and plunges his tongue past her teeth, swallowing her cry when he buries himself in a single stroke. He doesn’t hesitate before setting a rhythm that borders on frantic, rushing back to her every time he pulls out as though pausing might enable someone to take her away from him. He doesn’t wait for her to take what she needs, instead setting his thumb to her clitoris and demanding she follow him down, jolting each nerve ending with each thrust and grinding his desire into her flesh.

She comes before he does, a short blinding burst of ecstasy that takes her by surprise, her nails carving a long stripe into his shoulder as Mulder continues to touch her, to possess her. The aftershocks skirt the border between pleasure and pain, and she’s about to reach down drag his hand away when his hips jerk violently and he collapses on top of her, whispering her name over and over. He’s hot and heavy and choking every sense with his need, claiming back what she means to him from the darkness.

Scully marvels that she doesn’t resent him for taking over so completely, for asserting total control over her body, demanding and delivering in equal measure without ever asking for her blessing. Her previous lovers have always sought to control some aspect of her; her career, her beliefs, her purpose in life, nudging her gently but persistently in a direction that they believed would be “best for her”, and it had always been what drove her away. Strangely her body had been the one thing none of them had tried to master, happy to enjoy the basic offering and let her look after the rest herself, all the messy hormones and times it just hadn’t quite happened for her and she’s said not to worry they’d believed her. And she’d assumed that she was happy that way, that to be taken over by a man in any aspect of her life was not something she would allow.

Until now. Mulder’s breathing slows but he still doesn’t move, dabbling curlicues in the short hairs that are sweat-plastered to her neck, his lips resting against her pulse.

As the night sheds its nightmares, he needs her and she lets him.

* * *

Mulder doesn’t breathe until the bedroom door has shut silently behind him and he’s made it across the landing floorboard undetected. Dodging the creak of the third step from the bottle, he digs some old running shoes and a ratty t-shirt that he thinks belongs to his father out of the laundry room, and escaping the house he starts to run.

He woke up this morning with a woman in his arms and it felt like home.

It terrifies him.

When he invited Dana Scully to come to the Vineyard with him for the weekend it had been a reflex, an impulse, one born of desire and need and a niggling feeling that he would always regret not asking if he didn’t. He hadn’t expected this. Last night on the pier he’d told her his deepest fear and then in bed she’d witnessed it at its most visceral. Instead of running and hiding, instead of awkwardly comforting him or feeling obliged to explain away the unravelling of a man she’s only just met, she had looked him in the eye and understood. She had taken his hand and she had listened. She had held on to him and let him love her, let him bury his fears in what she could give him and then, when all was calm, she’d gone to sleep in his arms.

And this morning she was still there, small and soft and filling a gap in him he hadn’t even realise he wanted to fill. She’d moved with him when he moved away to look at her, burying her nose, that imperfect freckly nose that nods just slightly to the pink bow of her top lip, in the hollow of his collarbone and breathing like it belonged there. He wants it to belong there.

He shouldn’t want it.

As the burn of the path pounds through his feet and courses up his body, Mulder starts to list all of the reasons why he mustn’t think like this any more. First and foremost his work, the X-Files he fought so hard to have turned over to him, now consume his every waking moment. There is no space for anyone else in his life. And if there were, if he were to invite someone in…? No. It would be too dangerous. The forces at work against him are insidious, and while he has little to lose Scully has a life and a family that a close association with him would put at risk.

And that’s assuming she would even want him.

Outside of Quantico, outside the week they have shared, would she like the man he is? He is broody and obsessive, he doesn’t go to bars or to the cinema, doesn’t stroll through parks on a weekend morning or read the papers in bed. Perhaps here, away from reality they could make it work, but Scully deserves something, someone, who can give her a normal environment that will allow her extraordinary mind to flourish. She will graduate the academy at the top of her class, join a competitive division and rise through the ranks quickly, decoding evidence and cutting through bureaucracy with that sharp tongue and fighting spirit. That should be her life. Not some shadowy half existence, weighed down by her “Spooky” boyfriend and his reputation.

Maybe she might bear it for a while but in ten years… twenty? When she should be running the Bureau and instead is just running herself into the ground to escape all the chains that an association with him would weigh her down with?

No.

Even if his life would allow it, even if he could risk her safety and his heart, it could never work out,

Remembering his nightmare with a shudder, the look on dream Scully’s face as they tore her away from him in the facility he somehow felt responsible for,  Mulder’s mind is made up. He reaches the headland and stops, focussing on the dust swirling at his ankles and ignoring the majestic view he knows is just a few degrees north of his eyeline. He can’t think on beauty this morning, not if he’s going to do what he has to do.

Without taking in the sunrise, without taking more than a breath he turns back to the house where he will once again lose something he is just beginning to love.

* * *

Scully wakes in an empty bed with the unshakeable feeling that something has changed. She remembers going to sleep in Mulder’s arms, remembers the way he softened around her as he slept, all traces of his nightmare gone from his body. And as she remembers the way he loved her and she feels suddenly,incredibly naked.

Perhaps it would be different if he were still here, if she were waking up to his hands marking time on her belly, his lips at her ear offering her coffee or maybe another round, but instead she is alone. Naked and alone in a room that is not her room, in a house that is not her home, with all her defences scattered with her clothes on the floor. She sits up and pulls the sheets tightly around her, trying to reclaim her independence from the events that undid her and listens for sounds of Mulder in the house. There are none.

Darting out of bed she assembles her clothes and pulls them on, adding an extra sweater against the morning chill and then sets about remaking the bed, smoothing away all remnants of their passion, all the markers of their intimacy so that they will not have to talk about it unless they both want to,

She hesitates before she braves going downstairs, caught between a desperation to see him, to remind herself that what happened in the night was an equal surrender, and worrying that if he smiles at her in the soft morning sun, if he reaches across the room for her touch, she will lose more of herself than she already has.

She needn’t have worried. He is not there.

For the first time since they arrived, Scully is painfully aware that she is in someone else’s home. She doesn’t recognise the people in the photographs, Mulder is conspicuously absent from them, and for a split second she imagines that this isn’t his home at all, but that they have borrowed a stranger’s escape for a couple of days. She feels like an intruder and worse, she doesn’t feel like herself.

Just as her mind begins to run away with her, she catches sight of a picture tucked half behind a wedding portrait. It’s of Mulder and a girl with long, dark hair, Samantha she supposes, the two of them squatting next to a sandcastle with gap-toothed grins and a summertime squint. Scully’s seen Mulder smile like that once, when she said she would come to the Vineyard with him, and in that moment she realises what a privilege she has been afforded. A wash of impossible tenderness flows through her, for the boy who loved the seaside and the man he has become, and she thinks how he should smile like that more often and that she would like to try to make it happen.

And then the doorframe rattles and she puts the photo down guiltily, scanning about for something familiar with which to anchor herself. It’s only the wind, but Scully’s panic carries to her to her still untouched bag, to the the heap of reading she has yet to consider and guilt creeps in to further muddle the mess of her emotions. She used these books to rationalise her presence here this weekend, as a way to justify chasing an opportunity offered without losing sight of the future she had chosen when she quit medicine. These books were her excuse, her promise to herself that she would not compromise the freedom she has claimed from the expectations of her family and her past, and they lie abandoned while she floats about a stranger’s house, imagining lazy afternoons and the love of a man she barely knows.

Typical Dana. She can already hear Missy’s voice in the back of her head, soothing and scolding in equal measure when the whole thing inevitably falls apart.

“You don’t need to give yourself up to fall in love Dana. Your better half should make you a person and a half, not a just a whole.”

‘Shut UP!’, her voice, unexpected and unintentionally loud, startles Scully out of her head and into her senses. Mulder only asked her for one day, he’d only promised her “until tomorrow”. And now it is tomorrow, and he is gone and her planned future is at her feet, waiting for her to claim it.

Swallowing back tears along with the feeling that this could be different, that in choosing Mulder she might find out more about herself than she stands to lose, Scully drags her bag into the kitchen and pulls book after book on to the scrubbed oak table. Pouring herself a glass of water she  loses herself in medical terminology and crime scene proceedings. Here there is only one right way of doing thing and she needs that certainty right now.

* * *

She’s lost in a book when Mulder finally gathers his resolve enough to slip through the door, her back to him, head bowed in a russet glow and the morning sun pouring in the kitchen window. He can imagine her like this in his kitchen, glasses precarious on her nose and one hand wrapped around one of his mugs, coffee on the stove top and - stop it Mulder. This is exactly how she should be but not in his dingy apartment, keeping company with his battered couch and damaged psyche; she belongs somewhere exactly like this, in a bright clean kitchen, one that she owns, where the man walking in to worship her can be all the things she deserves.

Scully hears him come in and hesitate, and so she pretends she hasn’t, putting off the inevitable awkwardness of confidences shared without the protection of a plan to combine their futures.

Mulders ‘Hey’, when it comes is so small and soft that she has to fight the urge to fly to his side and coax the fullness of his voice out of him. She makes herself wait, sliding her resolve and her bookmark home and turns, planning to meet his eyes just briefly and return his greeting.

‘Good morning’, she tells him, meaning it to sound like goodbye but then there’s a look on his face that’s exactly how she’s feeling; that determined but devastated look of a decision made and already regretted. It’s on her face too she thinks, because there’s no other reason why he’d cross the room in two steps and sweep her into a hug, why she’d hold him back, letting her feet sweep off the floor to cross at the small of his back and hug him so fiercely it hurts her heart. He’s crushing her a little, but she wants him to, to somehow find a way they can fit together permanently so she doesn’t have to.

They both inhale in to speak, and then a phone peals in the next room and breaks the moment; Mulder unwillingly working his fingers loose of the satin of her hair and Scully gasping for breath and sanity as he sets her back on the table and tells her he’ll just be a moment.

He’s longer than a moment and when Scully creeps around the doorjamb to find out why, she sese Mulder hunched over a desk and scribbling, an unfamiliar shadow on his face. He sees her peeking and closes his shoulders, putting his back to her.

She shrugs awkwardly and retreats and he instantly regrets his reaction, but his privacy is an ingrained habit, especially with Frohike yammering in his ear about breaching security at Area 51 and a lead they may have that will be gone in 24 hours. He’d left Scully in the kitchen determined to find another way, his default hopelessness knocked off balance by the promise of her embrace, but now he has to literally choose. HIs life’s work or a girl he met this week. For the first time in years Mulder’s head and heart can’t agree and when he finally gets off the phone, head swimming with data he finds that it doesn’t matter.

He reaches the kitchen and the books are gone, their owner too, and the note that is in their place tells him that both of their heads have won out.

> _Mulder,_
> 
> _It’s tomorrow and I think we both know that as wonderful as this has been, it’s not sustainable. You have somewhere you need to be, a purpose to fulfil. I do too. I need to finish the academy and be my own person before I try and be anything to anyone else. I don’t know if I could have got through telling you that face to face. Please forgive my writing a note instead of waiting, there’s something about us in a room together that makes impossible things seem possible and we both know that only ends in heartbreak._
> 
> _I’ll get a taxi from the village to the airport and find a flight. Sorry not to share the driving… actually I’m sorry not to share a lot of things but I don’t have any regrets._
> 
> _I’ve loved this time with you and I won’t forget it. I hope you won’t forget me either._
> 
> _You told me recently (it’s all recently but doesn’t it feel longer?) that I was one of the special ones. I needed to hear that. I think maybe you do too._
> 
> _And you are Mulder. I don’t know exactly what you are searching for but I do know you will find it, and that there are people out there who you can trust. I’m one of them. Though I have to leave you now, for both our sakes, know that if there is ever anything I can do to aid your search or help bring your sister home, you only have to ask._
> 
> _~~Dana~~ Scully x_

Mulder reads it twice, the slant of speed and the odd smudge revealing the haste in her seemingly calm farewell, and then he locks himself in the bathroom and stand under the shower until he is sure she is far enough away that he won’t be able to catch her.

She has beaten him to their destruction, and he’s not sure whether he loves her more for saving him one more self-inflicted wound or hates her for not saying goodbye.

* * *

Under the flourescent tubes of the tiny airport lounge Scully tries to convince herself that she is reading her textbook when really the words are swimming before her eyes as she uses her peripheral vision to watch the door, just in case Mulder comes running through like the last scene in a cheesy movie.

He doesn’t, and when she finally gives up her seat and lines up to climb the stairs into the small lane that will take her back to Virginia and her life she feels the aching niggle of something unfinished settling at the nape of her neck.

Her heart stays heavy as they fight gravity and leave the Vineyard behind, the vapor trail vanishing long before Scully’s doubts.

Two weeks later Scully finds a small parcel in her mailbox, the familiar scrawl scratching across the still tender surface of her heart. Inside is a travelsize bottle of laundry detergent, some quarters, a bottle of store salsa, a spent bullet, a stained beermat from the bar and the receipt from their late night stop at the convenience store, the key to his mother’s porch and a postcard of the Vineyard,.

On the back of the postcard is a note,

> _I’d take a week with you over a lifetime with anyone else_
> 
> _F.M._

And though her smile stings with held back tears, Scully laughs.


	10. Epilogue

Scully has spent longer than usual flat ironing her hair, determined to look her best for this meeting. It’s been a long, often boring two years at the Academy mortuary, a far cry from what she’d imagined when fighting her father over her choice to joing the FBI. But today it all pays off, she has a re-assignment meeting with Section Head Blevins and she can’t fight the smile off her face as she navigates her way through the Hoover Building to find out what it is.

Anything active would be an improvement but she’s hoping for something where she can really see the difference daily, something investigative and changeable, to challenge her mind and not just her skills and concentration. Part of her longs to be sent into one of the departments dominated by burly men, to test her wits against the preconceptions and forge a path as far from the lab as she can get.

Scully settles in the chair with an easy smile and an open mind, then freezes when they ask her if she’s familiar with an Agent named Fox Mulder. Missy is the only one in the world with any idea quite how familiar she is with him, and for a few seconds her confidence slips, uncertainty flickering behind her just-steady gaze. She has not heard Mulder's name spoken outside of hushed gossip, or seen him or allowed herself to dwell on him during waking hours in the two years since she left him at the Vineyard.

Her dreams were beyond her control, and for a few months she’d half expected their paths to cross by chance. She’d looked for him at mixers, but gradually grew used to the idea that their week together was an an exceptional anomaly in her otherwise quite average life, the same way she’s grown used to explaining, to visiting family and friends, the presence on her apartment bookcase of the Mulder's souvenir collection. Remembering herself, her location, Scully reigns in her thoughts enough to recite the bureau-approved version of Mulder, recounting his legend and his lapse into ridicule, gathering her composure enough to direct a hint of an sardonic smile to the lingering smoker in the corner, a signal of her apparent indifferent amusement to the man she actually fell more than a little in love with two years ago.

As Blevins begins to explain his scheme, her new assignment, and she starts to understand what they want from her, her breathing accelerates and her eyes flicker in an uneasy battle to hide her reaction  under the sturdy plaid of her suit and a neutral expression. They want her to spy on Mulder, to have her debunk his work and when she presses for confirmation, their answer is intended to be a bureau-sanctioned kiss of death.

But it won’t be, because they have unwittingly chosen perhaps the only Agent at the Bureau who has promised Mulder to assist him if ever she can. They have missed a critical detail, one which will undermine their intended sabotage at every turn and the thought lends lightness to Scully’s stride even as heavy fear of this long imagined reunion gathers in her stomach. She reaches the basement door and knocks before she has time to overthink.

‘Sorry! Nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted!’ and he sounds as if no time has passed. She feels as if no time has passed, walking once more into his world with a secret smile playing across her lips, his shoulders broad and bent over his slides the way the once bent over her.

When he finally turns to look at her, she knows he was expecting her. There’s a slyness to his smile, a sparkle in his eyes that warns her not to say anything and when he shakes her hand he holds on just a little too long. His hair is also just a little too long and two years contracts to a moment as she fights not to reach in and smooth it back.

She’s just smiling at him and his eyes twinkling but while talking loudly and deliberately, as if  to warn her that someone may be listening Mulder's words may be making her sound unwelcome, his body language is telling her that this will be fun, that he’s pleased to see her, that this is the beginning of something exciting.

And she thinks he’s right,

Two years ago she could have loved him and maybe he could have loved her, but they both needed something more than the other had to spare. Now? She doesn’t know if it will be like it was, but they have something more to offer one another; she will be his safeguard and he will be her adventure and together…

Mulder flicks the lights off and boots up the projector, his energy infectious and his questions quick-fire, igniting her brain with the possibilities of his imagination. Scully can tell straight away that they will argue, that they will bicker and fight and disagree and discover but god, in the spaces between…what a life they will lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the ending I planned when I first started before I ever really started thinking of it as an AU, I hope you like it, that it makes sense. I really took inspiration from the openness and flirtation of S! Mulder and Scully, who trust each other way too soon and started thinking of maybe why that might be... this story is my answer. I may do some S1 drabbles to add in some scenes of intimacy I imagine took place before Scully's abduction but will see if they come to me :) Thank you to everyone who supported this series, it means a lot, Rose XX

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a one shot prompt grew into a ficlet and is now quite probably the first in a short series. I'm supposed to be writing other things but... thank you to amymbythesea on tumblr for the prompt


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